


The Ghosts of Christmas Eve

by WackyGoofball



Series: The Shredding Project: Fairytales Retold [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Christmas, Declarations Of Love, Depression, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Romance, Woop - this is already a pre-existing tag. Who could have guessed?, ghost may or may not relate to other characters - so can you spot them?, which makes Jaime act like a bit of a dick...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-22 08:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 59,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13163427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WackyGoofball/pseuds/WackyGoofball
Summary: Tyrion Lannister wants nothing more but his older brother back. Inviting him over for Christmas dinner is his one hope to help his brother break out of his shell into which he withdrew after the horrible accident at Jaime's factory some years ago.Brienne of Tarth wants to come to terms with the aftermath of the accident, while also trying to mend the damage between her and her employer Jaime. She is driven by her wish to get to the bottom of the accident that cost them both so much.Jaime Lannister is trying to keep himself together, but thereby just keeps pushing those away who care about him most. Driven by guilt, regret, and an ongoing anger over how his life always seems to take a turn for bad, Jaime has long since given up on the happiness others associate with Christmas season, wanting to be by himself, if only to keep his loved one's out of harm's, or rather his, way.Alone at home, Jaime is visited by ghosts from past, present, and future, teaching him some many lessons, some of which prove to be rather painful, but Jaime has to realize rather sooner or later that much more is at stake than Christmas itself.In fact, he may, yet again, come just too late...





	1. Two Visits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TeamGwenee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeamGwenee/gifts).



> Hello everyone, thanks for looking into this story.
> 
> This is yet again a shredded fairytale version that now made it into actual written fic. For those not familiar with my little "Shredding Project" as I call it, it's an ongoing process wherein I rewrite fairytales of all kinds to fit into the Jaime x Brienne context, all of which can be found on http://w11.zetaboards.com/Jaime_x_Brienne/index/ in the respective folder. Thereby I take the liberty to insert my comments as I write, for more or less humoring my fellow JB shippers, but as part of the "Shredding Project" here on Ao3, I try to make actual fanfiction out of those never-proofread, comment-ridden shreddings that I post on JBO all the while.
> 
> While I take on the general plot of "A Christmas Carol," I made quite some changes to it. For instance, Jaime does not share as much in Scrooges stingy malevolence because I rather wanted to explore this tale through the scope of his coming to grips with trauma and ongoing regret, leaving him with self-doubt and no real outlet to filter his anger through. 
> 
> To send this fair warning ahead: I have zero clue about technology. Suffice to say that this factory is doing something that requires both heat and pressure, so it might be printing, it might be electricity, it might be something completely else, but it's not necessary for the upshot, which is why I reserved the liberty for myself to keep it simply... vague. So yeah, please bear with me on that one. ☺
> 
> And here are the usual warnings that always go: I am still no native. I still go unbeta'd. Thus, you read all of my mad writing at your own risk, LOL. 
> 
> I gift this to TeamGwenee, who wrote me a wonderful fanfic for 2017's JB Secret Santa, which had me think back to that shredding and somehow inspired me to type it out and make it presentable for Ao3 standards. 
> 
> I hope you will enjoy this fic. 
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

  
  
  
  
  
  


Tyrion Lannister, a man of no great height but ever the more so of a great mind, as far as he gives himself credit for it, that is, is a rational man. He believes in what he sees, in what he can deduce, using logic and reasoning. Therefore, he is not the kind of a person to wait for miracles to happen. If such wondrous occurrences were an actual thing, he would be 6”5 tall in frame, his sister would adore him, and his father would have at the very least a begrudging respect for his capabilities, and would likely not despise his very existence.

But apparently, Tyrion Lannister has long since given up on the hope he may once have born as a small child, namely that magic of that sort exists to bring about better circumstances.

The conclusion, therefore, seemed always rather straightforward to Tyrion, which is to do what is necessary to see certain things being achieved, even if that means running up against the same windmills over and over, expecting a different outcome.

Some may consider it a kind of madness, but to Tyrion, it’s actually the repetition of an experiment he just _knows_ will have to bear the right result at some point of time. And he won’t ever see that result achieved unless he keeps trying, so the youngest son of Tywin Lannister is aware.

It took the great innovators of their times many tries, many tears, much sweat and effort, to create the lightbulbs they use without even caring about what a great invention these once were, to make cars drive with gasoline instead of using horse carriages, or figure out how to properly freeze food to keep it from turning bad. The creations of these great minds didn’t just fly their way, no, they had to craft them, had to start over and over again. And Tyrion, considering himself a man of just that spirit, therefore sees the merit of trying over and over, even if the right result did not yet come about.

_It just means I have to keep altering my method, simple as that._

Thus, tonight proves to be one of those times he tries to make a miracle happen himself, though he is aware that the chances are rather unlikely to bring about the desired outcomes. Truth be told, he finds it more likely that a dragon is going to jump out of the stone dragon egg he was given by his new employer Daenerys Targaryen for his last birthday. And that thing has “ _Made in Tyrosh_ ” carved into the bottom, he may add.

However, despite his rational mind, Tyrion knows he inherited his family’s stubbornness, which drives him to the factory holding little hope against these very odds, each year again, to see another result than that of the previous years.

Tyrion makes his way past whistling and blowing machines, trying his best not to knock against the men and women roaming past him, making towards the exit already because it is this time of the year, and no one wants to stay longer than absolutely necessary, he is aware. The dwarfish man has walked down that path some many times by now, but it always fills him with a strange sort of feeling, a sense of foreboding that his endeavor will yet again prove futile.

Yet, Tyrion doesn’t allow that to slow down his steps as he makes his way across the platform leading over the machines, past the production site, until he comes to stand in front of a small office with familiar golden letters neatly glued to the glass.

Tyrion knocks on the door once, but does not wait to be welcomed inside as he simply strides in, knowing that inside, he likely won’t have a warm welcome, no matter whether he waits or not.

“Brother dearest,” Tyrion calls out, flashing the brightest smile he can muster as he approaches the rather dimly lit office.

It always makes him weary to think that only a few years back, all lights would be on, and that there would always be a flask hidden in the wooden chest to the right to have some small secret drink while no one was looking.

_But all of that is changed now._

Jaime Lannister looks up from one of the stacks of paper spread out on his massive wooden desk, his face barely moving as he speaks, “Tyrion.”

“My, your mood is yet again at a new low,” Tyrion teases as he comes closer.

Though that is actually a rather analytical assessment of the situation. His brother looks like a man who is in dire need of a holiday he won’t take for himself, _naturally_ , because Jaime is too busy burying himself in a concoction of work and his own misery, which comes to boil especially during this time of the year.

“If you just came here to insult me, we might just as well get over with that now. I have much to do, Tyrion,” Jaime tells him, running the fingers of his left hand through his hair, which, in Tyrion’s opinion, would look much better if it were to see a barber sometime soon.

Not that Jaime Lannister, even the worn-out, grimly looking version of him, were not painfully handsome anyway.

_That bastard looked dashing even while hospitalized, Seven Hells._

“Yeah, I bet you have _tons_ to do, as you have not yet mastered the arts of proper delegation, rather doing all on your own, not even bothering with a secretary to do the paperwork for you like most other rational employers,” Tyrion says, one hand in the back while the other picks up this or that item from the cupboard to the left, acting as casual as he can.

“What do you want, Tyrion?” Jaime sighs, picking his pencil back up to start writing again, even though that proves difficult, as his hand moves nowhere as swiftly as his other once did.

“I wanted to invite you over to my house tomorrow,” the younger man answers.

“For Christmas,” Jaime translates. His gaze won’t even wander in Tyrion’s direction for just a second, but instead keeps focused on the paper in front of him. Yet, Tyrion can see the distress at the mere mention of the holiday, which turned so bitter over the years.  

“Yes,” Tyrion affirms. “The way you say it makes it sound like seeing the dentist.”

“You know what I think of that whole fuss,” the older brother argues, chewing on his lower lip. Tyrion can see how he curls in on himself, the right arm in his lap tensing.

In fact, he knows that Jaime doesn’t like the “fuss,” but that is only the half of it. It’s not so much that he hated the holiday due to people fussing around the way they do in the most annoying ways, far from it. There was even a time when he seemed to enjoy Christmas time, Tyrion still remembers, but ever since the incident, Christmas is one of those days that turn to poison inside Jaime’s mouth.

“Yes, for the past few years… you made it _achingly_ clear, I am afraid,” Tyrion says, making sure to keep his voice light despite the fact that this is no joking matter, really. It’s different from last year’s attempt, which he hopes will get him further than last time, which included Jaime walking him to the door and telling him to leave at once.

_That method proved not very productive in the end._

“And if you believe that I will meet up to play nice with Father or our dear sister, you are gravely mistaken,” Jaime answers, shaking his head.

“Do you take me for a fool? We both made a decision not to go back to the Rock but build up our lives here in King’s Landing, no? The fact that we are here means that I don’t have to look at those two ever again, so long I can help it. Thus, no, it’s just some friends, having a good time with wine, grog, eggnog, sweetplum punch, and lots of food… and even more wine. No family dinner of the sort that we had back at Casterly Rock, by my honor,” Tyrion promises, holding up his hand.  

Things have been under a strain, to say the least, ever since the _Aerys Affair_ , but their family ties were flushed down the toilet after the one Christmas that changed everything.

“I have other plans,” Jaime tells him, barely moving his jaws apart as he speaks, likely trying to contain himself and his growing anger and frustration.

But that is part of the problem – against common belief, Jaime Lannister keeps much of his grief and anger buried deep inside him, even if it keeps eating away at him over the years. And Tyrion should know, he grew up with that man, grew up thanks to him, but those are the kinds of things that become hard to express when your brother can’t even seem to look you in the eye.

Jaime is always fighting for composure, Tyrion is aware. And that is perhaps the most painful in it all, to know that he is trying so hard not to be the way he is, but can’t seem to find it in himself to change his course, so he just keeps lashing out, like a lion in a cage.

It’s a miracle that’s needed, but apparently, they don’t exist, or at least, Tyrion has not found any sustainable evidence to back up the claim just yet.

“You mean drinking yourself to oblivion and beyond, sitting in your armchair, wallowing in self-pity and loathing? As you did for the past few years?” Tyrion huffs, fully aware that this is what his brother is up to. He saw it one time, after he forcefully entered his brother’s mansion, finding the bottles scattered all around, which had even him, a good drinker himself, rather shocked. Because Jaime, by comparison, usually doesn’t drown his sorrows at the bottom of a glass of booze, but that one Christmas… yes, it changed everything, absolutely everything.

“Rich coming from whom I'd consider an alcoholic,” Jaime scoffs.

“A _functioning_ alcoholic, I must insist. There is a difference there,” Tyrion corrects him. “Our dear sister? She is just an alcoholic without knowing how to function while she chugs down the champagne like it’s apple juice. I can compose an entire business plan after a bottle of red arbor. I would even go as far as to say that I make the _best_ plans when I am at least… a _bit_ tipsy.”

“If you think so,” Jaime sighs, blowing out air through his nostrils, his eyes drifting back to the paperwork that seems to occupy his entire mind. At some point Tyrion asks himself if Jaime is actually are of him being there.

“Well, I’d want you to meet my friends. I think you might enjoy yourself alright, at least I reckon it to be more entertaining than… your plans,” the younger man argues, abandoning the cupboard to now glance at his older brother with more sincerity.

“It’s my tradition now, and I think I will keep it that way. You are free to have your own. Don’t be bothered by your old brother being, well… _this_ ,” Jaime says, gesturing down himself before scribbling something on the paper again.

“But I _do_ bother. I’d like to have my old brother back every now and then, you know,” Tyrion argues, licking his lips.

And he wished there were a miracle out there to make that happen. He has his one family right there in front of him, and yet it feels as though a thousand leagues lie between them, a distance Tyrion cannot seem to cover with the small steps he can take at a time.

“Tyrion,” Jaime exhales more forcefully this time, a gentle if evident threat, but the younger man is not wavered in trying to make the impossible happen, so he goes on to say, “We used to hang around all the time, remember? It was us against the rest of the world – and the Lannister Clan. We used to have beer and wine, sitting on my patio, watching the stars, making fun of the family, plotting pranks against our dear sister back at the Rock… I miss those times.”

“Those times are over, I am afraid,” Jaime mutters, not looking at him, still.

“But why do they have to be?” Tyrion asks. “Why can’t we just… start again?”

Jaime chews on his lower lip, his grip tightening around his pencil. “Because I am… I no longer am this person, Tyrion. And you should just let that go. You should…”

“You are my brother, so of course you are that person,” the younger man insists.

“Things have changed. People change. That is the way things go, Tyrion. Like it or not, we can’t all stay the same just because we want to,” Jaime says through gritted teeth, the pencil crunching in his palm. “We have to forget it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Then come to terms with it,” Jaime replies. “Come to terms. Move on. Forget.”

“I don’t want to come to terms with that,” Tyrion argues, still.

“Then that is something I can hardly help you with – because this is… the state of affairs, simple as that,” Jaime answers, pursing his lips. “It’s over, it’s done. This is who I am. This is who you are. Live with it – but leave me out of it. I just can’t, alright?”

“You know, I miss some many things, and truly, you have any reason to feel sorry for yourself after your accident, but Jaime… As someone who belongs to the category of broken things, let me tell you this one thing: You have to stop doing that to yourself,” Tyrion advises him, hoping to somehow break through to his older brother, though judging by Jaime’s expression, his words won’t even carry past his desk with lions carved into the wood.

“It suits me fine,” Jaime answers, trying to sound nonchalant, as though he didn’t care. And Tyrion knows that he just tries to push him away, to make his little brother leave – leave him, alone and in his own misery.

_Because Lannisters are too stubborn to accept help, they don’t want to admit weakness. They think they have to do it all by themselves. Which, in turn, means all but one thing: Lannisters are a bunch of fools, but too proud to admit it._

“It doesn't, we both know that. And it won’t suit you _ever_ because that here?” Tyrion argues, gesturing at the older man persistently keeping his attention on the papers before him. “That’s not the man I knew, the brother I knew.”

“No, but it’s the brother you have now. And if you can’t live with that brother, then… then you can leave him to his misery all the same. No judgment here,” Jaime tells him.

“I won’t leave, no matter what. I know that I made it seem like it when I went to Essos for a while, but I am not leaving again, I won’t repeat that mistake, I told you. No matter how much you try to push me away. I have had that for all my life, I am used to that, I can take it. You don’t get rid of me that easily, ever again,” Tyrion tells him, hoping to somehow spark a reaction, but it doesn’t come.

Jaime won’t even look at him.

Tyrion’s time in Essos proved to be a rather big strain on the brothers’ relationship. He wanted to make his luck elsewhere when Jaime headed towards the capitol to work with Aerys Targaryen, never even asking his younger man whether he wanted to join him there. It was hurt pride that drove the little brother back then, Tyrion will admit that now, but back then, he blamed Jaime for it, for not staying around him, leaving him to his father’s bad temper, making him feel even more unwanted than he had for all his life anyway. Because Cersei and Jaime were making it big in the capitol while the little dwarf remained stuck with a father who wished for his death ever since his birth, apparently.

Thus, going off to Essos, with the clear intention in mind to join a company that could overtake Lannister Enterprises seemed oh so sweet to Tyrion by the time. Daenerys Targaryen was just the right person, he believed. Young, inexperienced, and sometimes, _or rather way too often_ , too rash in her decisions and actions, but influential and capable of capturing the masses nonetheless. Tyrion thought she was what was needed to make the company she had born out of basically just ashes skyrocket, and he thought he was what she needed to make that work, making him feel important and wanted, when he felt like he wasn’t getting that from his family.

News reached him far too late that her father, Aerys Targaryen, whom Jaime had worked with, had been killed by his brother. To this day, Jaime only ever told him fragments of the story, no matter his prodding, no matter Tyrion’s ongoing interrogations. By the time the younger man had made arrangements to go see his brother at the capitol, the damage was already done and Jaime could hardly hide his disappointment that even his beloved little brother had taken so long to check on him.

And that is the kind of guilt Tyrion knows he has to bear, because it was that false pride that had kept him too long, believing his job was too important to leave everything aside at once to rush to his brother’s side when he needed him. Because he wasn’t there for Jaime when he hit that first low in his life, the same way their father and sister proved to be of little assistance on the matter.

Because, of that Tyrion is aware by now, Jaime would have sailed across the Narrow Sea with a cockleshell if need be if only to get to his brother, had such a thing happened to him and had he gotten word of it.

That’s what brothers do.

And Tyrion didn’t, or rather, did too late.

Therefore, ever since, Tyrion has tried to make good on that. He didn’t quit his work under Daenerys Targaryen, but he made arrangements to handle her affairs from the capitol, now more invested in handling the trade routes with the Westerosi market. He informed her that he would only come to Essos for urgent business meetings and the like, but that his home is King’s Landing, and that this is where he will have to stay, no matter where she may move from now on. What he didn’t tell his boss was that the truth was even simpler than that which Tyrion told her: His home is and will forever be wherever his older brother is.

“I don’t even ask that you stay for long, just to get to know them,” Tyrion bargains, surprising himself with the edge of desperation now in his voice.

“What do I care about getting to know your friends?” Jaime retorts, but then shakes his head, likely feeling ashamed all over.

_It’s like watching a man constantly lashing out, only to end up punching himself in the stomach._

“It’s, it’s someone who…,” the younger man stutters, but Jaime doesn’t notice, but instead goes on to say, “Tyrion, you know that I love you, but some things you should just leave at peace. _That_ is such a thing. I spend this bloody holiday however it pleases me, like it or not.”

And Tyrion knows that this was the last token. This trial run proved yet again to be a failure.

“Well, in case you change your mind, there’s enough room for a bunch of more people at my house,” Tyrion exhales, accepting yet again defeat. “And my door’s always open for you to come and join.”

“For which I thank you, but it won’t happen,” Jaime mutters, adding a feeble “sorry” towards the end.

“And I can’t persuade you?”

“I am not like most other people, you know that, little brother. There are no men like me, only me. And because of that, I am one of the few people who are more immune to your persuasion skills than most. So no, you can’t,” Jaime whispers.

Tyrion nods his head slowly, taps his hand against the wooden table, once, twice, thrice, then turns around and makes back towards the door, feeling defeat weigh heavy on his small shoulders.

“Well, in any case, Merry Christmas, then,” Tyrion replies, hoping that Jaime will at least return the “Merry Christmas”, but the only thing he gets is a hushed “Goodbye.”

The younger brother lets his head hang low as he makes his way out of the office.

_So much to making miracles happen. And this is supposed to be the season for it!_

He makes his way across the platforms, his footsteps heavy as he goes.

From below, Brienne of Tarth glances up to see the dwarfish man walk away, looking plain as day miserable.

 _It’s the season again_ , she thinks to herself with a grimace.

He comes by every year around the time to pay his older brother a visit, she knows. While Tyrion Lannister comes by more often than that, he is particularly persistent around Christmas season, seemingly hoping to sway his older brother against all odds.

_And there are many odds. Far too many to overcome, it seems._

Brienne wipes her oil-stained hands with a cloth hanging out of her overall as the short man climbs down the staircase leading to the exit of the factory, which is long since only filled with just the noises of the machines whistling and blowing to their very own rhythms, the rest of the people mostly having left to go home.

Her gaze wanders back to the machine busily whistling and blowing, steam climbing high in the air, looking almost like snowflakes raining down from the sky.

_Because it is the season, after all._

And the season always brings back bad memories, it appears. Just like it goes on to create new ones as brothers cannot overcome their distance and the younger man always comes in with such confidence in his steps that Brienne enjoys watching him make his way over the platform as though no one could hold him, but each time, he leaves with it gone, as though it got all drained out of him in the office, no matter how short the stay may have been. And once Tyrion Lannister leaves the factory, he walks as though he aged a bit more over that short visit.  

Brienne lets out a sigh, stuffing the oil-stained piece of cloth back into her pocket. She looks down herself, considering for a moment whether she should bother to get cleaned up, but then again, he has known her oil-stained almost since Day One at the factory, so why should she bother know?

Against the odds, Brienne reckons that young Mr. Lannister and she have more in common than what meets the eye, in that they are too stubborn to give up, even more so on the man who proves to be about just as stubborn as them.

What a nice trio they make in that regard, even if that just makes it ever the more difficult for them to resolve their problems, to find a way out of this mess that has been going on for far too long already.

Brienne shakes her head as she climbs up the ladder leading to the metal platform above to proceed towards her boss’s office, the path familiar to her, knowing every step, not even having to watch where she goes, as often as she took that way over the years.

Sometimes, Brienne gets lost in the memory of the earlier times of her work at the factory, when she would wind up by his office just because, for a talk, a short conversation, about how the Kingsguard faired in the play-offs, about her latest addition to her antique sword collection, or reminding him to leave the paperwork for good, because Jaime Lannister tends to drown himself in the work, even before all went wrong and twisted out of shape and place.

Those times seem so achingly far away that Brienne sometimes starts to question whether they ever really happened, whether they were just a fantasy she keeps clinging on to because the reality of it proves far too painful over the years, or actually the reality she once had, but has no longer.

Brienne hesitates for a moment as she has the hand already raised to the door, but then knocks anyway, gathering all of her courage, which should strike many people as odd, because people tend to think of her as someone who is always acting boldly.

_And yet, little do they know._

Because she is not nearly as bold when it comes to the matters of the heart.

“Tyrion, if it’s you again…,” she can hear Jaime curse through the door, but Brienne calls out hoarsely, “No, it’s me.”

From the other side of the door, she can hear the rustling of papers and Jaime muttering something under his breath in sheer frustration.

“Oh. C’mon in,” she can hear a now almost sheepish voice ring out.

_He always tries so hard, ever since the incident…_

Brienne steals inside, holding on to the doorknob in her back once she is inside the office, finding somewhat reassurance with the cold metal pressing against the inside of her palm. She considers herself a woman of steel. Brienne finds something calming about the way machines operate, always going the same circles, you can figure them out in ways that she oftentimes feels like failing when it comes to the human mind, the human capacity of emotion.

Steel has something beautifully simplistic about it, which may also party explain her fancy for antique swords. There lies elegance in the art of forgery, of making metal work, make it function. There is an order to metal that she finds lacking in a world that proves to be so very complicated more often than not.

_Especially around the season…_

“I apologize. I thought my brother was just taking second chances here, though he should know better by now,” Jaime says as he puts down the pencil in his hand, though Brienne doesn’t come around to notice the broken in half pencil lying next to it. Knowing him, Jaime probably held on to it too tight to contain himself, his anger, his frustration, and snapped in half between his fingers.

That is part of the reason why there was a drastic rise in the stationary costs, since Jaime continues to have a high consumptions of pencils, though that wasn’t always so. It only ever began when something broke inside of him, leaving him with only just the pencils to break instead.

“He’s left,” Brienne tells him simply.

“Oh, alright, then,” he answers, chewing on his lower lip pensively. “So? What can I do for you?”

“It’s just… everyone else already went home because it’s past closing time. I was just… wondering… if you are going home soon, Mr. Lannister?” Brienne explains, letting her head lean towards the small glass milky window of the door, through which she can make out the outlines of the machines still running.

“ _Mr. Lannister_? I thought we were past that a long while ago,” he chuckles softly, yet bitterly.

If not for all this mess, she’d most definitely still call him Jaime now, he knows. However, that stopped a long time ago. Nonetheless, it doesn’t stop him from thinking back to a time when they were almost there, if only just almost.

“Jaime,” she repeats, chewing on her lower lip, not daring to look at him as she speaks. Somehow, all those things that used to be easy between them are now difficult. Even calling each other by first name proves to be a challenge now.

“Well, I won’t stay too long. I just wanted to wrap up the reports,” he answers.

“You know, you may want to reconsider on a secretary,” Brienne comments.

“I hire someone if I find it necessary,” he says, more forcefully than he intends to. “I mean… I rather do those things myself. I made some bad experiences with having others handle those matter, so I rather do the extra-work, just to be sure, you understand?”

“Of course,” she replies curtly.

“And what about you?” he asks, though it’s clear that he has to force himself to keep up conversation. Everything seems difficult for him as of late. “Are you heading home any time soon as well? Or are you yet again up to extra hours?”

“No. I just wanted to see about the machines another time,” Brienne replies, thumbing behind herself. “Make sure they are all working properly before I close them down over the holidays. You know, one cannot be careful enough after what…”

“That again? Brienne, they fixed them by now,” Jaime sighs with frustration. “There is no need to always double check. It’s over.”

 _It’s over now. All of it is over. That’s the entire point_ , Jaime thinks to himself, but buries the thought just as quickly as he looks back on his papers. Now is not the time. And he shouldn’t talk about it, even less to Brienne.

“One can never know,” she insists.

“Not that again, woman. That only makes my stump itch,” Jaime curses, cradling his right arm in his lap, feeling phantom pains rush right through the useless limb.

And he doesn’t want to raise his voice against her, but Jaime can’t seem to help himself, Brienne can see it in the way he moves, can hear it in the voice with which he speaks. He is so trapped in himself that it’s painful to watch, especially for a woman who is rather someone to take action, but ever since that day, she found no way of moving forward, no way of taking action in the right direction.

It has been a floating since, a crawling without arriving somewhere.

“Sorry,” she mutters. Jaime sighs heavily.

He can’t be yelling at her. He mustn’t be yelling at her, Jaime knows. It’s not her fault, it’s his. All of it is his fault.

 _That’s the entire point, too_ , he thinks to himself.

“You should be going home, Brienne. See your family and friends. Be with the people you care about most. It’s Christmas… and all that,” he tells her through pursed lips.

And that is what people do around Christmas time. He once did, too, but that time is long since over and out the window, to where new snow is falling to the ground, some melting on the black pavement, other snowflakes adding to the gray mass by the sidewalks, and just a bit covers the roofs and lanterns of the city, to give them the brightest white hats on top.

“Yeah, uhm… sure,” she replies, averting her gaze.

 _If only I could tell him… If only I could say that…_  

“As far as I saw, you signed up for the earliest shifts available after the holidays,” he can’t help but note, looking back over some of the reports.

He always handles it on a voluntary basis. People who want to work those days are welcome and get bonuses, but he doesn’t force them to come into work. Aerys did that, but he is not Aerys.

_Thank the Seven I am not…_

“Yeah… I won’t travel to Tarth this year, so I didn’t see the need for prolonging the holidays more than is necessary. I said to myself that I might just as well save it up for… _later_. And if someone else can therefore stay home longer, ever the better, wouldn’t you agree?” Brienne asks softly.

If she is bound to her own misery, why shouldn’t she grant that bit of seasonal bless to the people who can enjoy it instead?

“Yeah, sure. But you should put it to rest now and head home,” Jaime argues.

“But I…,” she means to object, but Jaime cuts her off more harshly than he intends to, “Go home now, Brienne.”

“… Alright, then,” Brienne mutters, letting her head hang low. “Be safe.”

“You, too,” Jaime answers, keeping his face stoic as Brienne nods her head hastily before turning around to quickly slip out the door through which she came.

Jaime lets out a long sigh, tossing the next broken pencil into the trashcan after it cracks in to between the fingers of his left hand.

_Such a mess._

He leans back in his chair and waits, listening to the familiar noises of her routine. The whistling of the last machine comes to a halt at last as she shuts it down. He can hear Brienne climb the ladder one more time, her footsteps heavy on the platform above as she makes her way towards the exit.

Only then does he get up from his chair, gathers his coat to wrap around his useless stump, puts out the lights in his office, and starts to walk through the now empty and silent factory. Once Jaime is across the platform, he aims towards the switches, but before turning them, he stops for a moment to look around the factory another time, his factory, the remains of his life, his legacy.

He hates it as much as he loves it, or used to love it.

This place used to hold such good memories, but most of them turned bitter over time, leaving nothing but bile in his mouth at the mere thought of them, so he rather pushes them down as far as he can.

There was a time when Jaime happily came into work. He came into work with a smile on his face even before he became the boss. Jaime enjoyed himself alright working under Aerys, too blind to see by the time that it was all false promises, false happiness that he was living on.

But it didn’t matter to him back then, Jaime thought that this was his gateway to happiness. That this was the way towards being with the woman he thought loved him as much as he loved her by the time, even if that meant breaking with their father in turn, even if that lead to Tyrion disappearing across the Narrow Sea for a time, licking his wounds over what he considered a betrayal by his older brother by the time.

And even after all that was dealt with, Jaime found happiness and consolation in the factory. He got closer with Tyrion again, after he had returned to Essos, to make good on his promise to make up for the time he spent away out of “false pride” as he called it.  

Jaime used that energy to get back on his feet, and so he started over, made the company his own, had Aerys’s name removed from the office door, made the factory his, not just on the paper, but also right within. He tried his best to make the employees feel good about themselves again after all had been scared thanks to Aerys and his ongoing bullying, later on abuse of the workers as he forced them into overtime when Jaime didn’t know about it because Aerys just kept changing the papers before handing them to him. He saw to it that they get proper pay, and against the odds of some lingering mistrust against him, they had begrudging respect for him, which was all Jaime ever asked.

He felt like everything was going alright, and then… things got better, against all odds, far better, incredibly better, and it was then that Jaime thought life had actually begun again, that this was his second chance, that this was his time.

_Just that it wasn’t._

When he thought his second chance had arrived, the thing crash to the ground, burned in the air, and left him gasping for air, fighting for composure ever since.

And now, the factory makes him sick, even if it's supposed to be the one thing that keeps him upright these days, giving him a purpose he no longer finds in his life otherwise.

Jaime shakes his head as he puts the lights out and makes his way outside, the cold air blowing against his face harshly, though the sensation is welcome to him, as he found his skin all heated up due to the anger he tried to keep from boiling back in the office. It’s the kind of anger he doesn’t know the source of and therefore doesn’t know how to shut down. Jaime just feels so thin-skinned, like his useless little stump seems hurt at every small touch because the skin is still tender, no longer tough or useful.

But it makes no difference anyway. What’s done is done. And this Christmas will prove to be like any other, Jaime thinks to himself as he folds up his collar to keep off the cold, cursing himself for having forgotten his scarf at home by the time he dragged himself to work this morning.

After all, it’s high time that he gets home, to begin with _his_ Christmas routine.

_Because one cannot start early enough to make a toast to yet another year of shit drawing to a close._

Jaime makes his way past decorated houses, people hurrying home or hurrying to get some last-minute present they actually forgot when it’s just that one time of the year you have to mark down in the calendar. He watches some kids having a snowball fight in the backyard, which only reminds him of the times when he could still do the same, when he was a boy who played outside as carelessly and freely as those children do. How he and Tyrion teamed up against Cersei, on one of those rare occasions when even she enjoyed herself in their younger brother’s company, Tyrion on his back, tossing whatever snowball Jaime handed to him right at their sister, who shrieked as shrilly as she could while running for cover, swearing vengeance.

Jaime feels pain shoot up his stomach once it occurs to him that there is a part that earnestly envies those children playing.

And who in his right mind would envy children over a snowball fight? Jaime thinks to himself bitterly, shaking his head as he speeds up to get home at last, to where he doesn’t have to feel that as well, because he has the notion that he is feeling too much of everything, all at once, all too much, to the point that he can’t take it anymore.

Gladly, his mansion comes into sight at last, which almost stands out as the one house bearing no decoration whatsoever, looking even darker compared to those of his neighbors. Jaime lets a silent sigh of relief as he opens the fence gate, almost slipping on the muddy snow leading up to his house. He fumbles for the keys, which proves to be one of those things incredibly difficult with just a hand to spare, his frustration increasing tenfold when his left hand won’t do the work his right once did. At last, he manages to stick the key into the lock correctly, so Jaime quickly turns the key and the door jumps open. He pushes it open with his back while fishing through the mailbox to take out the envelopes inside before quickly heading inside.

A quick look at the envelopes confirms them as either advertisements, bills, and a thank-you card from that one charity organization he keeps donating to each year, though that only frustrates him more because of all the Christmas décor on the envelope making him sick to the stomach. Jaime tosses the envelopes on the dresser carelessly, before shrugging out of his coat and kicking off his boots into the next best corner. He pulls off his socks as well, since they got soaked even through the boots, which reminds him that he has to get himself a new pair sometime.

Thus, barefoot and feeling cold all over, inside and out, Jaime climbs the narrow staircase leading to the first story of his mansion, to the place where he spends Christmas now, at least for a few years now.

Jaime maneuvers into the fireplace room, where he once welcomed guests on a regular basis, but that tradition has been mostly abandoned safe for the occasion of getting drunk, which is not nearly as rare as he would want it to be.

_Seems to run in the family after all._

Jaime heads towards the cabinet where he keeps his liquors, schnaps, and the one spirit he allows around the season, namely that of the clear liquid sort. He takes out the next best bottle that comes into sight and sits down with it in the armchair by the fireplace without a fire lit. While he tries not to lest frustration get the better of him, Jaime still grunts with exasperation as he has to awkwardly hold the bottle between his thighs to uncap the damned thing.

_Even getting drunk proves to be difficult with just one hand, who could have guessed?_

Jaime lets a small sigh of relief when the bottle opens at last and he can take a first swig of the liquor burning down his throat. He relishes the sensation, the small pain as it rolls down the inside of his throat, if only to shut out some of the ache Jaime feels ever since his past was turned tragedy, dooming future along with it.

Leaning back in his armchair, Jaime closes his eyes, only to hear familiar voices, distorted and threatening, only to see images of fire and machines transforming into vicious creatures with a life on their own.

_And pain, just pain._

He takes another swig from the bottle, trying to muffle the noises, trying to silence the voices inside his head, trying to make the images as blurry as he can.

_I just want to forget this, if only just for a single night. Is that asked too much? Or is that a wish Santa won’t ever grant me?_

Sleepiness claims him after half a bottle of the tart tasting liquor has been emptied.

_What a Merry Christmas that yet again proves to be…_

“Cheers,” he says, taking one last sip before closing his eyes and allowing darkness to claim him, if only to forget for a time in the vastness of the nothingness of his mind, devoid of all noises, voices, whispers and murmurs, and the past that keeps cornering him wherever he goes.


	2. Aerys's Ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime is visited by a ghost once the clock strikes twelve, which proves to be a very unpleasant surprise. 
> 
> And not only does the man revive some painful memories for Jaime, but he also comes with other bad news...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for sticking with this Christmas Shredding, which keeps on shredding the original without any sort of mercy, LOL. 
> 
> At last, we are getting to the ghost bits! 
> 
> I hope you will enjoy.
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

  
  
  
  
  
  


 

Jaime pries his eyes open slowly as the antique longcase clock strikes twelve. It was the last gift he ever received from his father, a family heirloom that came with a clear message attached without being written on a card: _This is your legacy, so you better forget your foolery of that nonsense factory and come back home._

Tywin might just as well have said it instead of encrypting it inside the old clock, but that seems to be the man’s style. While Jaime’s father would probably always claim the opposite, he has a fancy for the drama, the great entrances, the big messages.

 _He always dreamed big – and his children proved utterly disappointing_ , Jaime thinks to himself, almost amused, if only just almost, because it is not a good realization to learn that you are a failure.

While Jaime kept the clock with wonderful engraved lions on the side, he never answered his father’s call – and he won’t ever. That ended once and for all when he went into physio and there was just Tyrion to have his back as he struggled to regain mobility whereas his father was busy handling the business affairs, begrudgingly taking up with what, or rather _who_ , he had available to him after his two sons proved not very helpful in the Family Empire Tywin Lannister wanted to build, wanted to last a thousand years.

_The dear family, always there for you when you need them most… or so most people think._

It dawns on Jaime every year anew around the season, when he hears the employees talking about seeing the family, about Christmas trees, Secret Santas, travelling across the country to be with those people rarely see throughout the year. And every time he feels reminded of the absence of that happiness from his life. Because his winter season no longer involves a family aside from Tyrion.

It’s hard to accept that it’s not just you who broke with your family, but that your family broke with you the same way.

Christmas is simply not his season. Years and years of misfortune have taught him that valuable if painful lesson by now. Jaime is best off alone around the time, perhaps altogether, if only to keep that bit of a spark of Christmas Spirit alive in those who bother to care about it.

To him, that candle was blown out long time ago, leaving him in the darkness.

Licking his lips against the tart taste of the booze whose name he already forgot Jaime sits up straighter in the armchair, blinking as he lets his gaze wander around the dark room that looks about as festive as an abandoned construction site. Jaime wants it to stay that way, though. If he could, he would fast-forward through the season and spit himself out on the beginning of next year to carry on with life the best Jaime can, somehow trying to keep himself together when he feels like falling apart more and more with every day passing.

The clock still keeps playing its melody, which increasingly adds to Jaime’s irritation, only ever fueled by the liquor he already drank before falling asleep, which makes every noise sound like a jack hammer opening the earth right next to him.

 _I should have thrown that thing out long time ago, Seven Hells_ , Jaime thinks to himself as he just tries to slip back into the nothingness of his dreams, back to where there was just a black canvas with muffled voices all around him. And yet, he doesn’t seem to be granted that bit of a fortune as his head shoots up upon catching noises of metal scratching over his parquet floor.

Jaime jumps up from his seat when he sees a man approaching in the darkness, ready to strike at the thug who has picked the wrong man to fight over. It might be that he has just one hand to use, but Jaime is just in the mood to jump whatever guy may dare to rob him at the worst of nights of the whole year, no matter whether it may cost him his life or not.

_I have nothing to lose with that anyway, do I?_

However, Jaime can do nothing much but stand there and watch with eyes wide open as moonlight hits the stranger’s face, and it suddenly is no longer strange, but strangely familiar.

“A, Aerys?” Jaime stammers, the air catching in his throat as he sees the man coming closer. He seems almost translucent in the moonlight, shining a green sheen by the edges, his hair as silver as he remembers it, but longer and unkempt. His clothes, the suit he wore on his last day, hangs down on him like rags, which seem to merge with the heavy chains and locks wrapped all around him.

Jaime shudders, cold dread clutching at him, tearing him down, freezing him in time.

_No, that can’t be. I must be hallucinating this. I must be dreaming this. He is dead. He is dead for sure. I killed him. I was at his funeral, in the back where no one saw me. I was there. I saw him take his last breath. I made sure that it was. I watched as they lowered the coffin into the grave, so he may never come back. That can’t be. No. No. No._

“Jaime Lannister. At last we meet again, you filthy, treacherous bastard,” Aerys says, his smirk a wicked grimace as he comes closer, the chains following him with almost a shriek as they keep getting dragged over the wooden floor.

Jaime blinks. He must be imagining this. There is no other logical explanation for him being there. Jaime dreamed about Aerys numerous times, and one dream felt realer than the other, but this is different, simply different. He never dreamed of him in chains, never as a… _ghost_.

“You are just a dream. I am simply imagining this,” Jaime mutters, rubbing his eyes with his left hand frantically, trying to clear his mind, but to no avail.

The man in ragged clothes, wrapped in chains, looking like his former boss, sounding like him, gesturing like him… he stays, no matter how hard Jaime rubs his eyes, no matter how much he keeps telling himself that this is all but a dream.

_Because maybe… it isn’t?_

“You fool think I am not real,” the other man scoffs, seemingly amused by Jaime’s distress. “I am as real as all of your fears.”

“You can’t be real. You are dead.  I made sure of that,” Jaime snaps.

_And I would do it again and again if I had to._

Aerys steps closer to him, dragging the chains with him. Jaime coils back even though his mind tells him that this must be a dream, but he can’t help himself. The man looks too real even for an illusion that likely jumped out of the bottle of booze beside the armchair.

“This is just a dream. Just a dream,” he keeps repeating to himself.

_Just a nightmare, no more, no less._

He’s had plenty of those over the years. This one is most likely just a very negative next level of nightmares. However, all reasoning ends the moment on the older man with ghastly pale face reaches out and grasps Jaime’s arm – and to his great shock, Jaime can feel it. He can feel the men’s sharp fingernails digging into his skin, leaving bruises there. He can feel it.

This is real.

“Real enough to listen to what I have to say, no?” Aerys says with a wicked grin.

Jaime says nothing, just stares, not knowing what to speak, what to think, what to believe. This makes no sense, and yet, his arm feels the pain.

_This pain is real… so that means he is real, too, doesn’t it?_

Aerys lets go of him, laughing.

“Why are you here?” Jaime asks, keeping his gaze trained on the man’s mad eyes, which seem even more vibrant against the pale, translucent complexion.

“I was summoned,” Aerys answers. “And I couldn’t say ‘no’ to a chance of getting back at the man who took everything away from me, now could I?”

“ _Took everything away from you_? You wanted to set the company on fire with you in it!” Jaime barks, not quite believing what he hears.

He never told anyone about that, not even Tyrion. It’s something Jaime carries with him ever since it happened, ever since he let the man fall and never felt sorry for it.

_Because I could have prevented that, had I seen through it sooner, had I gone through the papers more carefully, had I opened my eyes to the truth sooner. But I won’t make that mistake ever again._

“But we would have gone together,” Aerys insists, holding on to him as though to convince him of it anew. “All troubles would have gone to ash.”

“Oh Seven Hells, I am arguing with the illusion of a man who was clearly insane,” Jaime growls in frustration, pulling his arm away from him.

“It’s no smart move to insult the man, well, the ghost of a man, who could kill you just like _that_ , you know?” Aerys threatens him coolly.

“I was never known to be particularly smart. That is my brother’s part,” Jaime retorts.

_Had I been smart enough, had I acted more like Tyrion, maybe I could have prevented much more harm, but alas, I keep failing._

“Sometimes I do wonder, you know? Was there a part in you that hesitated for a moment before you betrayed me one last time? And trust me in this, you can be honest with me. I would just like to know,” Aerys tells him, running his fingers over the iron chains wrapped around him.

Jaime wets his lips before replying, “I didn’t hesitate once the time arrived, no. I had to act fast. There was no time to hesitate.”

No time to think.

There was just a time to act.

And so he did.

“But did you regret it afterwards?” Aerys keeps pushing.

“I still don’t regret it. And I won’t ever,” Jaime answers, not averting his gaze only just once. Because he doesn’t regret. It was Aerys or the people in the factory – and Jaime chose the people, and would do so anytime again.

It was the one choice he could make without hesitation. It was the choices before that took him too long, which resulted in Jaime having just those two options to fetch from.

“Brave of you to say, now that it’s over and done. Look at you, no remorse of killing a man, from behind no less,” Aerys taunts him. “Such disgrace, and that from a man who once told me that he had a fancy for the old virtues, those of knights and noblemen.”

“I just say it as it is. I don’t regret that I did it. I regret that I didn’t see through you sooner, so that it never would have come to that escalation,” Jaime retorts, gritting his teeth.

He regrets not having seen the faked reports, not having realized the fear in the employees’ eyes whenever they saw their boss approach.

But ending it, ending him when there was no other way anymore? No, there is no regret. Jaime only ever feels regret for prolonging it, for letting it spiral as far out of control as he did, and thus having to take the most desperate measurements to see it end, once and for all.

That is the weight he has to carry ever since Aerys died, but the man himself? He did the engravings on his tombstone and readily jumped into the pit. Jaime just gave him one last push to make sure that he went for good.

“Ah, and yet, here we are. Seemingly, you can’t even do that outright, can you?” Aerys argues with a satisfied grin tugging at his thin, veiny lips. “I bet you still blame all the bad that’s happened to you on me and me alone.”

Jaime shakes his head. “You think you are _innocent_?! You wanted to _burn people alive_! You didn’t care! You just wanted to screw the insurance and if that meant taking some people along, so be it!”

“Oh, I don’t deny it,” the ghastly man answers, shrugging his bony shoulders. “Yet, I am not sure whether I am to blame for all the bad that has gone on in your life. You see, it’s the choices we make or don’t make. Or do you want to put the blame on me for that little… _accident_ as well?”

He gestures at Jaime’s stump with a smirk, looking almost satisfied at Jaime’s disability. The oldest son of Tywin Lannister swallows thickly as he holds his right arm closer to his midsection, feeling so vulnerable because of it ever since he lost his hand, which is just still healing skin, raw to the touch, earning him nothing but phantom pains and more regrets.

_Because I should have seen that coming, too, and should have prevented it. Just why do I always come in too late?_

“I was dead by the time, you might recall. And I can assure you, I am not the kind of ghost that comes to mess with the machines at night while no one is looking,” Aerys tells him with a smirk.

“Aren’t you?” Jaime scoffs.

As of tonight, he would have any reason to believe that Aerys is the reason for all of his misfortunes, if a ghost can come and touch him in his own house.

“I wish I was, but no,” Aerys laughs. “There are some many sparks I could ignite if only they had given me something to make that spark fly with, but instead, they wrapped me in chains like a creature… Though I suppose I should consider it a compliment. You only wrap in chains that which you fear can beat you.”

“Do you think that earns you my pity now or what?” Jaime snarls. “I lost _everything_ thanks to you.”

“You didn’t lose _anything_ thanks to me. You inherited the company from me, in case you forgot whose name is now on the office door,” Aerys points out to him. “Golden, I may add, so fitting for a Lannister, isn’t it?”

“I never asked for it,” Jaime retorts angrily, feeling a strange sort of relief of finally having a chance to curse and yell – at the man who cost him so much over the years, because normally, Jaime is too busy locking it up, keeping it away, but now he can pour it all out, all the venom, all the wildfire. “You declared me as second-in-command in the documents. I never forced you into it, you might recall.”

“And yet, you took over, when you might just as well have declined,” Aerys argues. “Might just as well have crept back into the lion’s den you call your home… well, or called, should I rather say?”

“I stayed to make sure that the mess you created was dealt with properly,” Jaime snarls through gritted teeth. “I had to make sure that the people got compensated for the damage done to them and your abusive practices. Hells, some people needed therapy thanks to you!”

 _And thanks to my hesitance_ , he almost adds, but then does not.

“And then you decided to stay anyway, having grown quite comfortable in the chair, hm?” Aerys hums.

“Why leave?” Jaime argues.

“Wasn’t that what you wanted all along anyway? Take advantage of me while you still could, and then carry my hard-earned money back to that traitorous father of yours?” Aerys challenges him.

Jaime shakes his head. “My father had nothing to do with it.”

“I heard differently about that.”

“From where? Ghost prison?” Jaime scoffs.

“Something like that, actually,” Aerys laughs drily. “Purgatory, in a way. Limbo. Bound in my chains. But no matter how I got the news, I _did_ hear that your father didn’t keep his hands entirely out of business once I… well, was forced out of it. Which has me wondering… was that perhaps your intention all along?”

“None of that was my intention. I joined you because, _yes_ , I had faith in you. I thought that the company was great. You used the newest technologies, you dared something,” Jaime answers truthfully.

_I believed – and I was a fool for ever having made that mistake!_

“Right, right, _that_ was the only reason why, of course, of course. Your sheer _faith_ in my enterprise,” Aerys snickers, turning on the back of his heel once, dragging the chains after him as he turns once around completely, as though he was dancing with those iron links. “I mean… We can go on pretending that this is the truth… Or we can admit that it is rather… far away from it.”

“What are you trying to say?” Jaime asks.

“It’s an observation, Lannister. Because it was surely not a coincidence that your dear twin sister had relocated to the capitol around the same time, after she and Robert Baratheon had not yet made their engagement official, but looked at houses around the area. You know, rumors spread fast. Let me tell you from my own experience. Not many understand that… very particular fancy,” Aerys tells him with a wicked grin. “Not in the way I do.”

Jaime blows out air through his nostrils, because he wants to say that it’s all a lie, but it isn’t. Not entirely, at least. Cersei was the one who suggested that he should move to the capitol alongside her. Before that, Jaime had actually considered going to the Riverlands to work under Brynden Tully, known as the Blackfish. He wanted to work outside his father’s company at least for a while, or so he told himself. Jaime wanted to rise in the hierarchy without the seat readied for him. He was young and wanted to prove it to himself that he could do it on his own. And he always admired Mr. Tully. However, then Cersei said that she would leave for King’s Landing, and back then, yes, he had been connected to her in a way Jaime came to regret very much as time progressed.

But that was what it was back then, even if it long since is no more. Jaime loved and he thought she loved him in just that same way. So he listened to Cersei’s proposal, which was to play nice with Robert for a while longer, leave him in the belief that they were only just inches from their engagement and becoming an influential couple in the capitol. After all, she bears an influential name and therefore equally important and powerful business ties to _Lannister Enterprises_. His sister kept telling him about how they could take flight once he arranged himself in the business with Aerys. It was all loose ends, upon reflection, never a fully formed plan, but Jaime held on to it as he abandoned the Riverlands in favor of King’s Landing and signed the contract with Aerys.

Everything seemed strangely perfect back then. Because Jaime genuinely enjoyed his time at the factory. He liked his job. He worked hard and Aerys made him feel like he was earning the spot that he got thanks to the family relations.

_But it wasn’t perfect, at all._

It took Jaime far too long to realize that Aerys had his very own plans, even before his madness came fully to light. That the man wanted to piss off his father after he had jumped off the cooperation the two men had going on by the time Tywin was still in King’s Landing, deeming it “no profitable business deal” anymore and “too risky to put the family empire at proxy for.” The subtext of that was that Tywin Lannister had already seen something that Jaime didn’t realize until he was too deep under already. Aerys wanted to tie Jaime to the company, to _his_ company, to take him away from his father in turn, thereby harming _Lannister Enterprises_.

He just wanted revenge on the business partner who abandoned him.

As his madness continued to spiral out of control, Aerys seemingly grew convinced that by torching the factory, he would gain even more money than he already had and build an even bigger company “from the ash,” as he kept repeating over and over the night Jaime found him down by the machines, carrying one small canister of green liquid up to the vats, which easily reach temperatures high enough to set wildfire burning. Though evidently, he seemed convinced by the time that he would rise from the ash and live on even after the explosion, and even if not, that he would go down as the winner, having more money, having taken Tywin Lannister’s most precious oldest son away from him. Jaime later on found scattered notes attesting his madness, written in his own blood, about how he would come back to take Tywin down, to punish all the traitors.

So no, Jaime didn’t just join out of good faith to Aerys. He joined for a love that was long since lost, if it ever existed in the shape that Jaime thought it to be, was overshadowed by the sweet promises that turned out bitter lies in the end. And the deal was sealed when Cersei accepted marriage to Robert Baratheon as the factory proved not nearly as successful as Aerys had made it out to be, or as successful as she hoped it would be – _if Cersei ever did, that is._

Then the accident happened, and Jaime’s twin sister and former lover couldn’t even bear to look at him, the broken thing he was, still is. Why? Jaime never got a definite answer to that, though from what he knows about her character, the answer goes somewhere along these lines: Cersei wanted something perfect – at least to her own measure – and Jaime no longer fitted the category.

As Tyrion pointed out, he now belongs to the group of broken things.

Not that her marriage to Robert proved any more perfect. Far from it. They had one fight after the other. He cheated on her with whatever prostitute he could get under the sheets with and Cersei herself, or so Tyrion told his older brother over a shared beer on his patio, let their cousin Lancel into the marital bed on more than one occasion while Robert was out to one of his hunting trips.

Now they are divorced for quite some time already. They never had any children, _with each other at least_ , and Cersei sat herself on the “throne” at Casterly Rock, taking up on the position that their father would have intended for his oldest son, had he not proven to be utterly foolish, stubborn, and now also apparently absolutely useless.

So perhaps _that_ was her perfect ending, Jaime will never know. He hasn’t spoken to his sister ever since he came out of rehab after losing his hand. Thus, it’s hard to tell if Cersei is happy with the life she now has or if she still bemoans the lives she could have lived, had she made some different choices.

All he knows is that it left him broken, torn to pieces.

“Perhaps I had some other motives in mind, but once I was in, I committed myself to the factory, your factory. I committed myself to you. That is no lie. And still, I lost so, so much thanks to you,” Jaime says, blinking repeatedly, his eyes suddenly burning.

He never told anyone, he put the files that affirmed Aerys’s wildfire dealings in a box that he then let burn in the fireplace right over there. Jaime was afraid that others would take up on the idea, copy his method and improve it, because wildfire, in the right dose, could potentially fire the engines exponentially. No one ever asked for those reports anyway. The stuff was removed and that was the end of it. And Jaime had hoped that torching the papers would burn Aerys’s memory to ash the same way, but that wish never became reality. In the end, he only burned himself in those flames, tried to burn his own guilt away, but by that time, Jaime was already known as the Kingslayer throughout the town, because Aerys’s nickname used to be “King” at first, “Mad King” later.

“You lost because you made shitty choices, Lannister,” Aerys calls out, pulling Jaime back to the ghost standing before him. “Accept that already. All that you lost, you lost it because of your own shortcomings. Because the simple truth is this: You never had those things you claim to have lost thanks to me. Your sister was screwing with you all this time, conscious now or not. She’s beyond ambitious, but the fool you were and still are, you never saw through it that she wanted the job that you readily gave up for oh so dear, oh so forbidden love. You lost your _illusion_ of the life you thought you were living, because deep down, you know it.”

“Know what?” Jaime asks.

Aerys leans closer to his face. “That even now, you belong to me.”

Jaime lets out a shuddered breath, trying not to flinch.

 _He is dead. Aerys is dead. He can no longer do any harm_ , he keeps repeating inside his head, but his mantra comes to an abrupt end when he feels the coldness of the man’s hand against his face as he taps his bony palm against Jaime’s cheek.

“You know, we all carry our little packages, our secrets, our dark desires, wants, needs, taboos, we keep them locked up in ourselves… So did I… and now I wear them around my neck, my arms, my entire body,” the ghost explains, touching the chains, which clink under the movement. “And you know that feeling, don’t you? Being suffocated by fear, by regret, by anger? Didn't you feel it consume you like fire? Didn’t it burn just as deep?”

“They never should have allowed you to even experiment with wildfire in the first place,” Jaime snaps, swallowing thickly.

_I should have prevented that, too. Which was one of my primary mistakes._

Aerys had ordered wildfire in small quantities over time, so no one noticed, not even the secretary he had assigned to the task. The figures were faked, and had Jaime double-checked, he would have known, but he had faith in the secretary to do the job, so he missed the faked signatures, the numbers that wouldn’t match if you knew what was going on in the production for real.

His boss seemingly had valid enough excuses for authorities not to catch it that he was in no position to have that much on his hands that he did by the time Jaime caught him. Jaime never knew how. All he knows is the image of Aerys clinging to the ladder leading to the top of the vat used for the heating with one hand and shakily holding a canister of green liquid in the other, ready to pour it inside and see everything and everyone go up in flames.

Jaime can still remember how he hurried up the ladder, all the while hearing Aerys laugh breathlessly, seemingly under the belief that Jaime was going to help him with the wildfire somehow, urging him “come and see, come and see” over and over again as Jaime climbed the ladder as fast as he could.

It was a matter of seconds, a blur in time.

Jaime took a hold of the canister with one hand, trying to prevent it from falling into the vat, and that was when Aerys started to realize that he wasn’t helping him pour the wildfire to ignite the spark he wanted to see catch green flame. They wrestled, fought for dominance, for life and death, and then…

It wasn’t even a matter of seconds. It was one second.

_One push was all it took._

Jaime gave his boss one mighty push to the back, as Aerys had twisted around on the ladder to regain balance, but he didn’t it and instead fell off the ladder.

“Burn them all,” was the sentence he shrieked as he fell to the ground below, the last words he spoke before he faded from the world, just not in the fashion he had envisioned in his mad mind, no green flame to make him rise from the ash, just a man, broken on the metal ground below, taking his last ragged breath.

Jaime will never forget the sound of the man’s crunching bones as they came apart under the force of the impact, the sound of dead meat slapping against the floor – and the silence. He never thought you could even hear silence, but that was the loudest silence Jaime has ever heard. It was all-encompassing, all-consuming.

After that, everything was a rush, a blur that stretched out by the edges of his consciousness. The workers came to see the bloody mess that once was their employer, whereas Jaime still stood atop the ladder of the vat, holding the canister with wildfire between shaking fingers, suddenly not knowing how to move, how to breathe. He knew nothing anymore, just that Aerys was dead on the ground and that the wildfire had not turned out the lethal weapon it could have in the madman’s bony hands.

Someone from the bomb disposal experts had to remove his fingers one by one from the canister because Jaime just couldn’t let go, as frozen as he was. A paramedic had to help him down because Jaime had gone into shock while the bomb disposal expert brought the canister outside, and brought it to where it could do no more harm.

Jaime was rather surprised that his father called up almost immediately after news reached him, though he was not at all shocked to learn that the real reason why he was calling was to handle the “Aerys Affair” as it was referred to thereafter as swiftly and silently as possible. Because that is just Tywin Lannister. You sweep it all under the rug, the rumors, of which most turned out true, no matter his father’s insistence to the contrary, no matter his straight-up denial, the problems, the dark secrets, you sweep them under and leave them to rot there.

While no one had seen the two fight between Aerys and him, Jaime’s father had the best lawyers hired to ensure that the official story was… apparently the right story for once: that Jaime killed the man out of self-defense, that he tried to prevent people from dying.

That Tywin Lannister then fought a case to ensure that the factory was handed over to Jaime was something he only cared for in the capacity that he wanted to see about the people being alright, but it reminded him that Tywin didn’t even care whether that version was true. For him, it was just a nice funeral meal to take along from a former colleague turned competitor. The reason for it was quite simple: By the time, Tywin was actually still convinced that his stubborn son would return to the fold once he had worked through his “issues” somewhat. That just never happened. Jaime stayed as the head of the company, but never returned to the fold, never returned to the family at Casterly Rock, therefore keeping all gains and losses that were made under Aerys and now under him neatly away from his father.

It may seem like a petty fight, and perhaps it is, but Jaime stopped caring about that a long time ago. Somehow, it was important to him that his father didn’t win this fight that he was battling with Aerys behind his back, all the while keeping him in the dark about it, even at the risk of letting this man rage more of control than he had been by the time they broke off the business ties, because Tywin later on affirmed that he had “certain suspicions” on the matter, but didn’t tell Jaime about it, too hurt in his pride over the fact that he dared making his own choices, going to King’s Landing when he wanted him at the Rock.

“Hmmmm, wildfire,” Aerys sighs, pulling Jaime back to the ghost’s presence, to this being reality for all he can judge.

Which is most definitely not the kind of Christmas miracle Jaime was hoping for.

_At all._

Though that just seems to prove his point – Christmas is not meant for the likes of Jaime Lannister.

“I’ve never felt as alive as I did the day it arrived at the company,” the ghost muses, and Jaime can see in his eyes the same expression that made him give Aerys the push back at the vat. “The power that came from something so small, seemingly unimportant. It was just a bit of green liquid, after all. And yet, it wields ultimate power. Or rather, the person who has it wields it.”

“And never did I feel so alive once that whole shit was being removed again,” Jaime snaps, not caring whether that’s a lie. What’s not a lie is that lives were preserved by this. The sad truth, however? Something of Jaime died alongside Aerys that night at the factory. Like the madman writhing on the ground, something inside Jaime took one last breath and was gone thereafter.

_And I likely won’t ever get it back, but that is the price you pay, it appears._

Thus, the removal of the wildfire was all but a tiny relief to the gaping hole Jaime has felt within him ever since that day.

“For that, you still seem… not so weightless. For that, you still seem so weary in heart regardless of the joy it should have given you, you fool. Is it that you blame yourself for killing me? Do you feel remorse? Do you miss me?” Aerys keeps taunting him, seemingly not yet giving up on trying to bring Jaime to say that he misses the time, that he cares about him still.

_Is that what haunting looks like? A ghost that wants appreciation for attempted mass murder? That’s not like they tell it in the tales, really._

“I don’t miss you at all. You were an asshole who deserved worse than he got. You treated people badly, you hit your wife, if not worse. You were despicable, or so I learned later on. But by that time it was already too late for you. So do I feel remorse? Not at all, other than not ending it far sooner than later. That stands, Aerys, and you coming back as a ghost to try to convince me of the opposite is not going to achieve it,” Jaime tells him.

Aerys retreats from him a bit at last and Jaime feels like he can finally breathe again.

“Pity,” the ghost says. “I do miss some many things about the life I once lived. About what we could have achieved, together, but it seems you and I are united in one simple fact.”

“Which is?” Jaime asks, swallowing.

“You are like me in this way: You can’t let go, and that keeps you stuck the same way it leaves me wrapped in chains. And that… is oh so sweet to me,” he sighs almost dreamily this time.

Jaime frowns, blinks, tries to make sense of it, but finds none. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want much of anything. I was sent here.”

“By whom?” Jaime demands to know.

“Oh, you wouldn’t know who it is even if I told you,” Aerys laughs. “I was sent here as the messenger.”

“And was _that_ the message already?” Jaime scoffs. “Because that would have been rather disappointing.”

“No, that was just… a bit of small talk between old friends. It can be quite lonely with no one to share in the good old times with,” Aerys tells him.

“What is the message?” Jaime demands to know.

“Three more ghosts are going to pay you a visit tonight,” the ghost answers.

Jaime blinks.

This is only just the beginning?

That is already one of Jaime’s worst fears made, _well_ , _not real_ , because this is a ghost, but real enough to make him shake to the bone, enough to make Jaime want to wish to wake up and realize it being no more than a nightmare.

“Three more?” he asks, the air catching in his throat.

“Yes. Once the next hour strikes, one after the other is going to appear to you. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. And not all are as friendly as I am, let me warn you,” Aerys tells him.

“The ghosts of… Christmas? For real?” Jaime laughs out loud at that, to the point of being hysterical.

Is his sub-consciousness now trying to tell him that he ought to celebrate Christmas, believe in Santa again like he used to as a kid, hang up Christmas decoration, munch some candy canes, and go to church to sing one of the usual songs perfectly out of tune? Is that it? Is that why he keeps seeing Aerys right now?

_I shall be damned if that turns out true. Then I rather sewer off my other hand as well._

“As real as it gets,” Aerys confirms.

“You have to be kidding me,” Jaime snorts. “I read stories of that sort before. And that’s it, they are stories.”

They are a fiction, some clever writer trying to convey a teaching, a lesson to be learned to naughty children who yet have to learn the true value of Christmas.

_Or some shit of that sort… and I am not up to such lessons in the middle of the night. Or ever._

“Ah, denial, it tastes so sweet while you can still make yourself believe in it, but trust me, it’s only a matter of time until they will come forward, one by one, ready to test you,” Aerys snickers, perfectly amused at Jaime’s distress.

“And what makes you so happy about that?” Jaime questions, only to have Aerys in his face again, leaning close to his ear to whisper, “I just want to see you fail. And I am fairly sure I will. You won’t pass the test, I am sure, and that means that you and I will have eternity to spend together.”

“What?” Jaime asks, struggling for breath with the man so close to him, the man he killed, the man who should be dead, the man who shouldn’t be here, the man he wants nothing but forget, but simply can’t.

It’s one thing not to be able to cast Aerys from his mind, to find his life always dancing circles about that first big mistake he has made in life that led to so many other, but it’s quite another to think that Jaime may be stuck with that man for all times to come.

_Isn’t it enough that he comes to me in my dreams all the while already?_

“You heard me,” Aerys says with a wicked grin. “If you don’t pass the test, you will join me, sooner or later… and I tend to think that it will be rather sooner.”

Jaime blinks repeatedly, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly a few times.

The ghost clinks with his chains for emphasis as he goes on to say, “You will bear the same burden as I do. And then you will be mine forever. And I can’t even wait for it. We have so much unfinished business, still, Lannister. Eternity will be hardly enough to catch up on all of it.”

Aerys pulls away slightly to look Jaime right in the eye, which has the younger man involuntarily shudder once again, cold spreading throughout him. His former boss goes on to add, “You think you can still escape me… but I know that I am still in almost all of your bad dreams. I am that part of your life you try so desperately to forget that I don’t even have to do anything to help your self-destruction. You do that nicely by yourself. I just have to gather the pieces. And trust me, I will be there.”

Jaime’s eyes open wide as he Aerys retreats, spreads out his chain-wrapped arms as though he was praying, but then green flames rise from his hands, scatter to the ground and within seconds, the entire room starts to be covered in green flames, spreading across the floor like tendrils.

Jaime lets a shout as he jumps on the armchair, not knowing what else to do, not knowing how to escape the flames that long since encircled him, coming closer and closer and closer. He can feel the heat lick against his calves to the point that he wants to scream, want to shout, though likely for no one to hear.

Or to care, for that matter.

For a moment, Jaime is right back up on the vat at the factory, clutching to the ladder and the canister, frozen, unable to move, unable to act.

 _So that is what would have happened_ , he thinks to himself as the green flames climb up the armchair, a strange sort of fascination rushing through him. _Had I not stopped him, that is… so that’s how it could have ended…_

Jaime closes his eyes, then, no longer able to take the heat, let alone the sight of the green flames ready to consume him and melt the flesh right off his bones.

Burn them all,” Jaime hears Aerys shouting over and over again.  

“Burn them all.”

“Burn them."

“Burn.”

“Burn.”

 _Burn_.


	3. The Ghost of No One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime is visited for the second time of the night, by the Ghost of Christmas Past, who is not at all what he thought such a ghost to be like. 
> 
> Though Jaime is to find out that his second visitation is in for some many surprises, some good, but quite a few very, very bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. Thanks for sticking around. 
> 
> Here is to another _Christmas Carol Shredding_ I hope you will enjoy.
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Jaime opens his eyes wide, gasping for air.

_Fire. There was fire. Wildfire._

_Aerys._

_The chains._

He blinks as his eyes adjust to the darkness, shocked to find the room perfectly untouched, no single trace of the fire that meant to consume him moments ago there anymore. Instead, it’s just him, slouched over in his armchair by the empty fireplace, drenched in sweat and yet chilled to the bone.

_Just a dream_ , Jaime thinks to himself, relief washing over him. _Just a bad dream. A really, **really** bad dream. _

He makes a mental note to throw the bottle of booze away that gave him such nightmares, but that thought flits out the window the moment on he glances down his arm. Because there are bruises there, matching that of a hand, just in the spot where Aerys’s ghost grabbed him.

Jaime leans back in the chair, breath hitching, heart fluttering. There is no way he gave himself the bruises on his left arm. He is short a hand to achieve such.

That leaves just one conclusion:

“This was real… this is real. This is happening,” Jaime mutters, leaning his head back. “This shit is real. Well, fuck me – and Christmas right along with it.”

However, if that thought was not frightening enough in itself, Jaime soon has another chilling realization dawn on him: If this is real, if this is happening and is not just something he makes up in his drunken stupor, then what Aerys’s ghost said was real as well, or at least might potentially be.

Therefore, Aerys may well have told him the truth about that trial – and the potential outcome. The mere thought has Jaime’s mouth go dry. He somehow reconciled himself with the man haunting him in his dreams, but to think that he might end up being stuck with that man in the afterlife, if there even is such a thing? That is far worse than Jaime ever would have anticipated.

But the sad truth? There is nothing much he can do about it, or is there? Aerys’s ghost proved it. The man did however he pleased, made green fire rise out of nowhere, and Jaime couldn’t get out. So if he is meant to get those three visitations throughout the night, they are bound to happen.

He is bound to undergo that trial.

_And considering my luck as of late, I am bound to fail as well._

Jaime didn’t find a way out in three years since the accident, and maybe he only ever made himself that he was doing better after Aerys was gone and someone walked in and made an unexpected change to everything. So what should have miraculously changed now?

_There is no such thing as Christmas miracles for me – the best I can get is Christmas hauntings, Seven Hells. So why even bother?_

As that thought pours out of him, Jaime sees a flash of blue that has him abandon it, letting out a shuddered breath as he focuses his attention on the old wooden longcase clock. While he doesn’t want to care, Jaime can still feel his chest contract with every second passing, every tick-tock, every turn of the golden pendulum.

It seems to be that even if you know what you have coming, your instincts tell you to stay alert, to make a run from it. That is just too deeply engrained, too deeply buried in human nature to abandon even in the face of ghosts coming to him in the midst of the night.

Jaime eventually starts pacing through the room, , his mind trying to hold on to that which he knows, the facts, the logic, tries to come up with a solution to this mystery, tries to find an answer offering some reassurance, offering a way out of the thought that this is not just a simple nightmare, but indeed a haunting, with a bitter end wrapped in chains at the end of the road. However, no matter how hard he ponders, no matter how much Jaime tries to think like his little brother would, no other alternative comes to mind, or is deemed irrelevant the moment on he glances back down on his arm where the bruises have come to full bloom already.

And no matter his mental insistence to the contrary, Jaime finds himself shocked each time he looks back at the clock, seeing the minutes slip through his fingers, _well, the five remaining, that is._

It feels as though time is fast-forwarding, if only just to add to his general misfortune, because there just seems to be even more for him to carry, for him to endure, lock up inside of him to somehow keep it from spilling out into the world, pouring over those he cares about most.

Outside, the snow keeps slapping against the frozen windows noisily, the snowflakes growing bigger by the minute. Fog hangs over the streets to the point that you can hardly make out the shapes of the lanterns, the cars, or even the middle of the road. The tranquility of the scene makes Jaime only more nervous, because everything goes its usual course, its usual ways, whereas he is stuck in a living nightmare, with ghosts turned real or nightmares turned ghosts turned real, whatever it may be.  

As the next hour nears, Jaime walks over to the fireplace to gather one of the iron bars there, a matter of precaution, and lets it rest beside the armchair into which he lowers himself thereafter, letting out a sigh as he leans against the leather of the seat, which turned cold again due to his body’s absence. He taps his foot on the ground repeatedly, trying to calm himself.

What is he supposed to be scared of, right?

_Shall those ghosts come. So what?_

He endured more than some bruises. He took by far worse – and survived it.

And who knows, maybe his drunken stupor goes far deeper than he believes it to be at this stage, resulting in Jaime dreaming up even this here, only to wake up in his bed sometime soon? You can’t rule that out, can you?

_Everything is possible once you let the thought happen that ghosts might be real as well._

If they are real, then beating them doesn’t seem so utopian.

Aerys shall be damned, real or not. He can win this trial, whatever it may be.

_And even if not… I will face it and bear the consequences, but I needn’t be scared. That is the one thing I still have – my fearlessness. For all it’s worth._

Jaime is pulled out of his thoughts when the clock strikes one. He looks around frantically for the next ghost to make his appearance.

However, even after some minutes have passed, nothing happens, no one comes in, no chains scratch across the ground. Everything is perfectly still. There are just the noises of the snow hitting against the window, the crunching of snow as some people pass by outside, and the clock ticking steadily.

Jaime lets out a shuddered breath.

_Can ghosts be late_? he wonders, glancing around the room.

He doesn’t get the chance to ponder the thought for much longer as Jaime sees a figure moving past him, coming from the shadows looming by the closed entrance door.

Jaime grabs the iron from beside the armchair as he gets up, ready to strike at whatever ghost or thug may come out of the shadows, but to his great shock, the person is right behind him all of a sudden.

“That is useless, you know? That only works in the movies,” a girl’s voice rings out. Jaime whips his head around, surprised to see before him a young girl, short in frame, unruly, short, dark hair, looking more like a boy than a girl, if he could not tell her apart by the sound of her voice.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“Did the asshole forget to send our regards?” she questions, coming closer, looking annoyed. “That guy’s good for nothing.”

And all of a sudden, the girl’s face disappears into a disk of mist and is replaced by that of a more tanned girl with freckles, light eyebrows and darting green eyes.

Jaime watches with eyes wide as the girl’s face keeps shifting in and out of shape, a boy at one step, a grown man’s bearded face one step later, and it just goes on and on until she stops right before him, her hands folded in her back.

And suddenly, she is a small girl with dark eyes and hair again, glancing up at him with a curious mixture of curiosity and nonchalance.

“So you are the Ghost of Christmas Past, I take?” Jaime asks.

“You _did_ listen to the instructions, right? I am sure as hell not the Ghost of Easter Past,” the girl scoffs.

“Well, your _lovely_ messenger was pretty busy setting my room on fire as well. Ghost-fire, fine, but I didn’t know that by the time,” Jaime laments.

“Did he?” she asks, wrinkling her nose, no single sign of distress over the matter, as though it was the usual business. “Ugh, I keep telling them that he is useless and should just stay put in his chains, but _of course_ , no one listens to the little ghosts around. Some things just never change. Adults never listen to the youngsters, for _some_ reason.”

She shakes her head, looking almost like any other girl her age, if Jaime didn’t know that she is a ghost that can shapeshift however she pleases.

“So yes, I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” the dark-haired girl confirms at last.

Jaime licks his lips, setting his jaw, gathering his confidence. “So? What will you do with me? Will you tell me of all my past faults? You know, I am actually aware of quite a lot of them. I am not proud of them, but I am aware.”

More than aware. They travel with him every day, and keep dragging him down deeper and deeper and deeper…

“That’d be too easy,” the ghost replies. “And that is not what brought us to you. We are here for a particular reason that has not so much to do with your past bad actions.”

“Then what is it?” Jaime asks.

_Why make everything a riddle, when you might just as well tell me, so we can just get over with this whole ordeal?!_

“If I were to tell you just now, where would be the lesson in it for you to learn?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.

“You could get over with it quite a lot faster?” Jaime suggests, almost surprising himself with having parley with a girl-ghost, hoping to somehow get out of the haunting alive.

“I’d like to, but there are rules,” she answers, rolling her eyes at him. “I hate those rules, trust me, but I have to stick to them, apparently. Or so I keep being told.”

Jaime shakes his head with a grimace. “You are… not at all what I expected of a Ghost of Christmas Past… or in general.”

He was more prepared for another Aerys-lookalike, looking on grimly, someone who would want to repay him for his past mistakes. And when he entertained the thought of the contrary, Jaime envisioned a soft-spoken sort of ghost, but a bratty girl who acts like a know-it-all? That was definitely not on the top of his mind.

The girl rolls her shoulders at that, her face momentarily shifting into that of an old man, but instantly switching back to her own, if it is. “If you believe that we all walk around with blankets over our heads, screaming ‘boo’ at people, then you are just damn wrong, which is not my problem but yours. Have you ever met a ghost before tonight?”

“No?”

“See? So _how_ would you know, then?” she questions.

“You got me there, I suppose,” Jaime huffs. “So… Do you have a name?”

He might just as well try some small-talk first, right?

“A ghost has no name.”

Jaime grimaces, choosing not to ask further on the matter. “Alright, well… then how about we get going? I would rather get this over with as quickly as possible, you know.”

If this is his end tonight, then Jaime would rather move on as fast as he can, or at least give it a try – and go down trying.

“That’s up to you,” she tells him. “Though I don't think you’ll get out of this fast… you seem like one of the dense kind.”

“Well, thank you,” Jaime huffs.

“You’re welcome. So now,” the ghost says, bringing her hands to the front, and to Jaime’s surprise, a sword along with it, with belt and buckles and all. There was a time when he had a small collection of antique swords, but that one looks like it’s even from before the times of the Long Night.

_That was what Brienne and I used to talk about when…_

“Hold on to Needle and we should be on our way,” the girl says, pulling Jaime out of his musing over a hobby he gave up along with everything else that once brought him joy.

“Needle?” he asks.

_So the girl has no name but the sword does? Talk about logic_ , he thinks to himself, hoping that the ghost cannot read minds as well.

“Just hold on to the sword and don't ask questions or else I may decide to drop you somewhere along the way,” she warns him. “And in contrast to me, you are no ghost. That means if I let you fall, you will crash to the ground. And there is going to be pain, I promise you.”

“Understood,” Jaime mutters as he begrudgingly takes a hold of the weapon.

Once his fingers curl around Needle’s sheath, all Jaime sees are snowflakes all around him, whirling upwards instead of gently lowering themselves to the ground. Even the girl with changing face fades away in the snow climbing up to the ceiling and beyond that into the sky.

One moment, Jaime sees himself in his fireplace room, the next, there is just a blur of white and blue all around him, making him lose all direction.

And the moment thereafter, Jaime lands in a pile of snow, face first. He spits out the clotted ice crystals as he straightens himself back up again, glaring at the girl smiling her most not-innocent innocent smile.

“I know you did that one on purpose, you little devil,” Jaime grumbles as he taps the snow off himself.

That was also easier when he still had two hands to spare.

The girl-ghost says nothing in return, just keeps changing faces again, each face shooting him even more of a wicked grin to add weight to her little game.

“So? What did you come here for to show me?” he asks as he stands up straight again, looking around with a grimace.

“You tell me,” she answers, buckling Needle around her waist. “Where are we?”

Jaime glances around another time, blinking, trying to make out something familiar, but that is when he catches sight of just those signs, and all he can do is stare.

“That is… Casterly Rock,” he gapes surprised once he becomes aware of the fact that he is not on the actual ground, but higher in the air. “And we are… on the balcony to my room.”

And it’s just like he remembers it from his earlier years, those not yet heavy with the weight of regret, remorse, and sadness, before everything turned all wrong and left him with only bad feelings for this place – and the people in it.

“Correct,” the girl affirms, nodding her head, before she zaps herself on top of the banister to balance on it.

Jaime steps closer to the window leading inside his former childhood room. He leans his head against the glass, surprised that he doesn’t leave a single trace on the glass, when he ate snow just a few moments ago.

“In case you are wondering… I have some leeway when it comes to the landing. But other than that, you are supposed to watch and learn your lesson from it. So don’t try to write stupid messages on the glass. It won’t help you,” the girl says, having him fear once more that she can read minds indeed. “And neither will it work. You are not… real in that way. We are just onlookers, silent observers.”

“Well, that’s not particularly new to me,” Jaime mutters to himself.

He has felt like an onlooker on his own life for quite some time now, so this seems rather fitting to how life treats him in general. There was a time when he felt as though he was right back into his own life, when he listened to old music from a jukebox and wasted no single thought on Aerys, on guilt and pain.

But then misfortune struck all over, and suddenly he was out of his life, and Jaime remains doubtful whether there is a way back for him anymore.

He has the feeling that he is too far gone by now, out of anyone’s reach, someone you simply cannot help and thus should give up on trying.

However, Jaime doesn’t let that thought weigh down on him too heavily and instead focuses on what is going on inside, shocked to see himself, when he was all but a small boy, sitting at a desk yet still too big for him, gripping his golden curls, a heavy book propped up on his legs, which he drew up on the chair, turning away from the desk as a small act of defiance.

“Oh, I remember now,” Jaime calls out from outside. “What a Christmas that was! Father wouldn’t let me slip on my reading sessions even on that day! I was so mad at him and the Maester they had assigned to teach me. I tossed that book through the entire room, scaring even the old Maester away. Father was furious, to say the least. He said that I wouldn’t be allowed back outside until I had finished the entire book. I tried to trick him at first, but he kept quizzing me to make sure I actually read the passages and didn’t just flip through the pages to the end. I was… so angry. It was Christmas, Seven Hells.”

And he was just a boy who wanted to spend that one day where the family was civil with them, but no, his father wouldn’t have it.

Work always came first.

His children’s education second.

And Jaime was never quite sure just what spot his children’s happiness had in that hierarchy, or if it ever had in the first place.

“Seems like you actually liked it back then,” the girl points out. “Christmas, I mean. For that you seem to curse the day so much these days.”

Jaime turns his head in her direction, shaking his head as he watches the girl balance, acting like just a girl her age, and that even though her face, which keeps on shifting, proves the exact opposite.

“Naturally,” Jaime replies, shrugging his shoulders. “Kids love Christmas until they realize what’s really behind it all. That there is no Santa putting the presents under the tree, but that in case of your rich parents, your father has the maids and servants buy them in a hurry, wrap them, and put them there by the time you lie in bed, listening carefully to maybe hear Santa come through the chimney. As a child, there’s nothing better than unwrapping presents, drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace, and watching the Christmas lights dance on the tree. You just don’t think about who put it up, how it came into the house. You just live the illusion for as long as you can.”

He turns his attention back to the younger version of himself. The boy is sniffling softly now, though the younger Jaime doesn’t seem to want to let the tears fall, or else he would admit weakness.

“The worst part was that it took me forever to read it anyway, and I hurt because I felt like Father was punishing me for not being faster, instead of just for being naughty to the Maester,” Jaime says, not sure why he tells the girl.

_As though she cared._

As though he should care. Jaime definitely has worse to deal with than some sad childhood memories of when his father didn’t act very fatherly at all.

And anyway, there are starving children in Yunkai, still, so who is he trying to humor with the problems of an entitled boy who had to read a book once? Perhaps that is what makes him so sick of the holiday besides the bad memories that mingled with it over the years – here they are, celebrating Christmas, exchanging presents that no one really needs, when the real trouble is out there, when the real danger is just out there, or in some cases, was right out the door, toying with wildfire.

Inside, the door opens and a woman with blonde hair comes in, and with her, warmth and goodness seems to battle the forlornness of the room away, as Jaime can see the light go up on his younger version’s face upon the woman’s arrival.

“Mother,” Jaime breathes as he watches her approach his boyish self, smiling softly, looking just as he remembers her.

His eyes start to glisten and now he is the one who has to try hard not to show the weakness he wouldn’t allow himself already back then over childish frustration thanks to a book that was too long and difficult for him.

No matter how much time has passed since she died, he still misses his mother, even if memories of her grew very faint over the years.

Jaime didn't want to miss her anymore, because he missed so very much already, to the point that Jaime thought his heart would just shatter to pieces. And so, he stopped missing her, or tried to forget that he misses her, but now Jaime can feel that gaping hole right there in his heart again – and it’s tearing on the edges, ready to make it shatter.

Joanna walks up to young Jaime, pulling one of the chairs over to sit down beside him. She always had a way to fill a room with just her presence. Jaime has never witnessed anything quite like it ever since.

“You know why your Father punished you, yes?” he can hear her say in her usual sort of voice, soft, but nonetheless determined.

“Yes, Mother,” young Jaime says, sniffling still. “I shouldn’t have tossed that book. I… I will apologize to the Maester once he comes back.”

“So obedient now, the little lion,” Arya teases. “Almost cute right there.”

Jaime rolls his eyes at her, but then ignores the girl in favor of his mother again. “Mother had her way about people. She was soft-spoken, but if she wanted you to do something, she would make you. Mother was the only person I know who ever had control over Father. He ruled the company, she ruled the house.”

Joanna strokes the back of young Jaime’s head, threads her fingers through his golden locks. “It’s good that you see that, too. Throwing a tantrum is never the solution, hm?”

“I know, I was just… I just wanted to have Christmas, not this book on the noble houses of Westeros,” young Jaime explains, sounding as miserably as a boy can.

“I talked to your Father about that as well. I think he should have given you that break. You did so well throughout the year,” Joanna tells him.

“Not well enough for Father,” young Jaime grumbles, puckering his lips. “It’s never good enough. Only the best is good enough. And this is not the best. He says it. I am too slow, far too slow. Not good enough, and that even though I should be, he keeps saying.”

“Yes, your Father has… high standards, but you shouldn’t worry too much. Your father is not perfect either, let me tell you that from experience. He, too, is only just human, like you and I,” Joanna laughs, still stroking his head. “So now, I tried to talk him out of the punishment, but you will have to finish up that last chapter before you can come celebrate Christmas with us, I am afraid.”

Young Jaime lets his head hang low, absolutely mortified that even his mother’s sorcery with which she could convince even Tywin Lannister failed on this special day.

“But your Father did not say _how_ you achieve that,” she goes on with a smirk, lowering her voice a bit, as though it was a big secret to keep, just between the two of them. “So now. How about we read the last chapter together, hm? And then we can celebrate Christmas. Yes?”

“Really?” young Jaime asks, eyes wide.

“Of course. And then you will know all the answers to your Father’s questions, I am sure. I raised a smart boy, after all. And then… we will all have a very merry Christmas,” she tells him with a grin. “Now, how about you read that first paragraph to me?”

Young Jaime smiles happily and starts to read, even if he finds it difficult, but Joanna lets him take his time, and between the two, it appears, it doesn’t matter how long it takes, so long it means that they spend the time together, making even of the dreadful task of reading something to add to a merry Christmas indeed.

Outside, Jaime is still transfixed by the scene, something long since forgotten, pushed away with all the bad memories that clouded it over the years.

“That was what made this Christmas one of the best I ever had. With her, reading seemed far easier… and I passed the test, of course… but the best was this,” Jaime says, pointing at the window, where Joanna pulls him to her and holds him tight.

“You miss her,” the girl points out. Jaime turns back around, surprised to see how her face keeps shifting on its own, and for a moment he can’t help but wonder if she has someone she misses, too.

“Naturally,” Jaime replies. “She died far too soon.”

“You want to take a hold of Needle again now, I think,” the ghost tells him, hopping down the bannister to hold the sword back up to him.

“Can’t we stay a while longer?” he asks.

_Just for a bit longer, just so that I can remember her face again._

“I fear not,” is the answer he receives. “We still have other places to go… and staying here for too long can have its side effects.”

“Such as?”

“I daresay you already have an idea about that, if you were completely honest with yourself. Staying in the past, for good or bad, is no one doing any favors, you see,” she tells him. “I am the big exception here because this is my time, but the rest of you? You are odd creatures in that way. Some memories you hold far too close, while others you push so, so, so far away that you need a magnifying glass to find them again. So no, we cannot stay.”

Jaime sighs, glances back with longing once, but then takes Needle and finds himself in the familiar flux again, filled with snowflakes defying natural order and lights dancing before his eyes as time and space keep melting away.

However, this time they don’t seem to change locations, they remain in the same spot until the snow clears, and they are by Casterly Rock yet again.

“What is that trick supposed to be? Is your precious Needle broken or what?” he scoffs.

“Needle never breaks,” she hisses at him, her face shifting to a dark-haired man with curls for one moment, but then instantly back to her own. “And in any case, you tell me, are we still in the same time?”

Jaime peeks through the window once more, to see a slightly older version of himself sitting by the fireplace this time, the room full of Christmas decoration, yes, but no candles lit, no happiness, no warmth to be found in this place.

Jaime swallows thickly as it dawns on him.

_It’s **this** time. _

The time he tried to forget to stop missing her.

“That was the first Christmas without Mother,” Jaime says hoarsely.

She died short before Christmas, which made every Christmas to follow ring somewhat hollow. Because it was Joanna Lannister who breathed life into those festivities when Cersei and he were still children. She read stories to him. They sang songs under the tree while Tywin sat in his armchair and didn’t look completely displeased, which was more than one could hope for.

However, once she was no longer, Christmas made less and less sense.

It was just an echo of what it once was.

Because the person who gave content to the holiday was gone, leaving nothing but the empty shell of it behind.

“No happy Christmas, then,” the girl assumes, hands folded in her back as she keeps walking circles on the balcony without leaving footprints in the snow.

“Not really happy, no. Not like it was while she was still alive, that's for sure. It grew colder in the household. Father grew _much_ colder, even though that seems hardly possible, granted that he is the man he is… Cersei was heartbroken, of course…,” Jaime recalls, surprised at the one simple question that comes his way next:

“And you?” she asks, her face momentarily that of a slightly older girl with auburn her and blue eyes.

“Me?” he asks.

“How did you feel?” the girl asks, now back to her usual face.

“I don’t know,” he answers defensively, but then blinks as he lets his own words echo through his mind another time. Jaime can’t remember that someone ever asked him that question around that time of his life. He rather concerned himself consoling Cersei, “toughening up,” as his father called it, moving past, moving on. Jaime never took the time to think what he felt, or rather… to just feel.

And yet, here he stands now, looking at himself as a young boy, with a ghost asking the question he ran away from for so very long.

How _did_ he feel back then?

“I was confused and sad… I think. A part of me thought that maybe it’d be good to celebrate, you see? To be happy… but no one shared that sentiment. Perhaps I was just trying to make myself believe that if we celebrated a jolly Christmas, she wouldn’t be… _that_ dead anymore, if that makes any sense. Mother was what made that household so lively, and without her… it was just cold… I thought that maybe this would bring some warmth back, and with it, some of her… the good of her,” Jaime says, finally recalling that time that he had long since pushed away along with all the bad that surrounded these past Christmases. And along with the memories of bad Christmases throughout the years, it got lost how he felt about Christmas that first time after Joanna’s death, how much he actually cared about it by the time.

“Was it the worst Christmas for you, then?” the girl asks.

“I had many bad Christmases in my life… and I reckon I will revisit quite a few of them, no?” he asks with a sigh.

The ghost chuckle at him, her face yet again shifting into some stranger here, some stranger there.

“But if _that_ was the worst Christmas of them all? I don’t think so, actually…,” he says, turning his gaze back around as he can hear a door opening.

A maid comes in, a woman whose name Jaime long since forgot about, too, much to his shame. She says something that Jaime cannot hear through the glass. He watches the younger version of himself speaking to the woman, walking over to her with tentative steps. The maid whispers something else to him, then, and they leave the room together.

Jaime already means to tell the girl-ghost that they should follow them, but she just holds Needle out to him wordlessly. Jaime takes the sword into his hand, and with a snap of the girl’s fingers, they are floating outside the room’s window into which young Jaime has gone.

For a moment, Jaime is tempted to scream, looking down to the ground below, but then he thinks better of it. He saw a ghost setting his room on fire, he travelled back in time with a girl who can change faces. This should not surprise him anymore, Jaime reckons.

Thus, he focuses back on the window and what is going on inside the room.

“What happened here?” he can hear the shapeshifting girl ask.

Jaime says nothing, just swallows as he sees his younger self come inside, looking scared, with still not dried tears on his reddened cheeks.

The maid walks over to a crib and takes a bundle out to give into young Jaime’s open arms. On a boy his size, the bundle seems almost too big, but young Jaime holds on as tightly as he can, glancing down at the stuff bundle in his arms, blinking once he catches sight of what is inside the bundle bearing the family’s colors.

Tears now fall freely from the boy’s eyes.

“That’s my little brother,” Jaime says with a sad smile, his eyes fixed on the scene before him. “I wasn’t allowed to see him at first. After the difficult birth that cost Mother’s life and… well, his apparent condition, the doctors came and went. Us children weren’t allowed anywhere near him. Cersei didn’t want to see him anyway. She still blames Tyrion for Mother’s death, to this day.”

“And do you?” the girl asks quietly.

“Do I do what?” Jaime asks, frowning.

“Blame him for your Mother’s death?”

“Never,” Jaime replies simply. “For me it was always… that my mother died. My brother had nothing to do with it. How could he?”

He never understood Cersei in that regard, or his father for the matter. They bore the boy a grudge for being born. _How can they blame him for **that**_? Jaime always thought, but never found a sufficient answer. _How do you blame someone for living?_

And that thought makes him swallow hard, because Jaime, by contrary, found himself asking the question of whether he is to blame for still being there while men like Aerys are no more, more often than he would like to admit.

“And did you blame _her_ for it? For dying? Leaving you?” the ghost keeps asking.

Jaime shakes his head, eyes fixed on the younger version of himself holding his little brother. “No, I never had that notion. And it was all over at that moment anyway.”

“What was over?” she asks.

“The anger I felt. Anger over that everything was different and that she was gone. _That_ made me angry, but it all dissolved once I saw him,” Jaime says with a sad smile tugging at his lips.

Because that, too, is a thing he somehow forgot, which does beg the question: _How did that happen? How did I forget that? How did I let that slip from my mind?_

“How so?” the girl asks.

“I was just… grateful,” Jaime whispers, suddenly feeling just what he felt back as a boy, but somehow forgot as a grown man, having abandoned most memories of the good times, or only ever feeling bitterness once they resurfaced, reminding him painfully of what once was and seemingly is no more.

“Grateful?” the ghost repeats.

“To her. For giving me… him,” Jaime replies, gesturing at the younger version of himself.

Inside, young Jaime starts to rock the bundle, walking small circles as he keeps muttering to the baby wrapped in the blanket that should have made him family to all and not just his older brother, “I’m glad you didn’t leave us, too, you know? But you don't have to worry, I will watch out for you the best I can, because Mother can’t do it anymore. But I will, you hear me? Tyrion?”

The baby gurgles in what sounds almost like a happy voice. Young Jaime smiles with tears in his eyes as tiny arms reach up to his tear-stricken face.

“Welcome to the world, if a little late, little brother.”

Outside, Jaime watches, trying to come back to that moment in his memories, but finding only traces of it, recalling only now just how much that moment meant to him back then.

_How did I forget? How do I no longer remember? Why? Why? Why?_

Just why does all the good slip away from him? Just where did he go so very wrong? To the point of seemingly no return?

“I am grateful that she brought him into this world, even at the risk of her own. She gave me the one relative I care about these days… I will forever be grateful to her for that gift. The best Christmas present she ever could have made me,” Jaime says with a sad smile, tears standing in his eyes.

You can pay life only with life, as it appears.

“And that he is a dwarf makes it no less true?” the ghost-girl asks, allowing her face momentarily shift to a man’s face that looks a bit like Tyrion’s, only to slip back to her own again the next moment.

“Absolutely not. What he lacks in height he earned in wits…,” Jaime says, shaking his head. “No, I am grateful. And that is why that Christmas turned out good after all… because I finally got to see him. That made me think that… it was not worthless. If my brother lived, then it couldn’t be worthless that she died. She died for a reason, _this_ one, right over there in the bundle… That made it more bearable.”

“Does he know it, though?” the shapeshifting girl questions him. “Your brother, I mean? That you think of it in such a way? That you think of him in that way?”

Jaime stares, swallows thickly. “I am sure he knows. He knows I love him.”

Some things don’t have to be said. People simply know some things for certain. Like you don’t have to explain to someone that gravity is a thing. You don’t have to know how it works, you just know it’s a power affecting you.

“But does he know that you don’t regret that he was born, even if it cost your mother her life?” she keeps asking.

“I told him often enough that Cersei is full of shit for ever having said that he was to blame for it,” Jaime insists somewhat defensively.

“But did you ever say that you were grateful for his life?” she keeps asking questions that turn more and more uncomfortable for Jaime.

“No,” he mutters.

_Yet another thing I did wrong! Let us rejoice!_ he thinks to himself bitterly.

“So you tell me, was it important that your mother told you these things about loving you and caring about you, or didn't you know them by yourself already?” the girl asks.

“I knew,” Jaime answers.

It was his gravity.

“Then why did she say it?”

Jaime chews on his lower lip. “Because it was important to her.”

“Right,” the girl affirms, which has Jaime grimacing.

If this journey back in time seems to prove one thing over and over, then it is that Jaime keeps messing up even the simplest of things. Telling his brother that he cares about him even in times such as this is apparently something he unlearned, forgot about, pushed away to the deepest corners of his dark mind.

_Maybe Aerys was right, and I deserve my spot right next to him…_

“Oh, and it seems that we have to be on our way. You have a lot of past to cover, fella,” the girl says, tapping Needle on his shoulder. Jaime shakes his head as he takes a hold of the sword, this time, not allowing himself to look back, somehow feeling like he stopped earning it.

This time, the flux of snowflakes tosses them out at another familiar place – the factory. At some point Jaime knows he shouldn’t be surprised that the girl took him back to the scene, but he doesn’t want revisiting.

He has those memories far too close to his heart and mind already.

He knows them with eyes closed, lying in bed, burning cold, leaving him drenched in sweat, suffocated by regret, too many times to the count.

And so, Jaime just watches on as he sees Aerys on the top of the vat and himself climbing up to prevent the worst from happening.

It is the night that changed everything for the first time.

“Do you regret it?” she asks, nodding at the vat the past version of Jaime currently climbs, all the while cursing at Aerys to stop.

“He’s asked me the same question, you know?” he replies, barely moving his lips apart, too captivated by the images before his eyes. “Maybe you want to arrange with each other beforehand who asks what questions, so that you don’t end up asking the same over and over, you know?”

“I ask my questions, he asks his. I don’t care enough to bother to talk to him. He is a psycho, you know?” the girl huffs.

“Yeah, I know.”

“So? Regrets?” she keeps asking anyway.

“Not at all,” Jaime asks, watching on as the fight proceeds by the vat. “Only that I didn’t end it sooner. Only that I didn’t listen to my own instincts before that night. I knew something was wrong with him. I knew something was up. The numbers didn’t match. He was taking too much time in the factory even after the closing hours… but I thought nothing of it until it was almost too late.”

“And still, you made it in time, no?” the girl argues.

Jaime grimaces, but chooses to say nothing in return.

“You see, you spend a lot of time regretting things that didn’t even happen. And let me tell you as someone who works in the business for a long time already, what’s not in the past is not in the past. I couldn’t take you to a past that never happened, even if I wanted to. Because it’s not there. What didn’t happen didn’t happen. You prevented it, so that is no past you can blame yourself for, and neither should you,” the girl tells him, her face not changing once as she speaks, as though to make clear that this is what she earnestly means to say.

“Well, that’s some wisecrack right there,” he snorts, though Jaime finds the words echoing deep inside him regardless of his snarky grin. Jaime was always great at concealing, which may or may not prove to be his doom one of these days, too.

“I have my moments,” she says, waving with her hand. “You know, I don’t think I have to see the rest of that. That psycho is only ever just about that. Only ever about his own death. And I am bored, so…”

Jaime is grateful when she holds out Needle to him wordlessly, sparing him to have to go through seeing Aerys fall. This time, he welcomes the flux of snowflakes taking him away from all time and space, surprised to open his eyes to…

“Brienne?!”

“You do remember her, huh? She’s also part of your past, you genius,” the girl scoffs. “So don’t act surprised.”

Jaime shakes his head, gathering himself, taking a look around. They are still at the factory, but now at the spot where Brienne works, the space she somehow made her own. Jaime watches her routinely going about the machines. She has a way with them. It fascinated him from the very beginning.

“Can she hear me?” he asks, looking back at the shapeshifting girl, who, in return only rolls her eyes at him. “Of course not. Neither can you change the past, so don’t even try. They always try, though… Stupid people.”

Jaime turns back around to watch Brienne in what he used to mentally refer to as her “little dance.” There is a rhythm to how she moves, checks the temperatures, the figures, the paths she takes, it’s a steady pattern, a beat that seems inherent only just to her.  

“No one can work those machines the way she can,” he muses, a faint smirk flashing across his face as he watches. “At first I thought she was no good at much of anything. Brienne only ever worked in _one_ factory of that sort before applying here. And that was a job her teenage crush Renly Baratheon got her. I reckoned she only ever had the recommendation from him because he had taken pity in her.”

“You do sound like a dick, you know?” the girl comments.

“I handled the personnel questions even under Aerys already. Selecting the best requires being a bit of a dick. You can’t take just anyone to handle those machines, you see?” Jaime argues.

“I don’t really care, though,” she whispers.

“You asked,” he points out to her. “And anyway, after Aerys… I wanted to be really sure that I only hire trustworthy people, able people. I myself had to make some changes because I let him hire people who didn’t see certain things. I wanted to ensure that such a thing never repeats itself ever again.”

“And yet, you ended up hiring her,” she argues with a small smirk.

“Yeah. She can be damn convincing if she has to be. I let her do some trial work after Brienne challenged me to it when I called her in for an interview. I never had someone earnestly challenge me to trial work, but that woman just did,” Jaime laughs, shaking his head. “And damn, did she prove me wrong.”

He can still remember how he watched her like a hawk, fully expecting her to go wrong, but the woman was only ever doing her routine about the machines, working her magic. Against the odds of not having much on her résumé, Brienne apparently brought more experience than Jaime ever dared believe to be possible. He only learned far later that she had already started having interest in those kinds of machines while still a young girl, hiding away in her father’s friend’s workshop, a guy by name Goodwin who showed her the _music of the machines_ , as Brienne sometimes calls it, and got her hooked.

Those were the kinds of things he only learned later, by a time they were almost close enough for some many things, sharing beers, watching games together.

_But then, of course, how else could it be? things took a turn for bad._

The girl grins. “That must have hurt, getting proven so very wrong.”

“It hurt my pride, I will admit, but Brienne was a valuable addition to the team. After Aerys was gone, she was the first person I hired, and I never found someone more capable than her. She has a way of communicating with those machines, I don’t know. It’s different. And a secret she won’t tell, no matter my prodding,” Jaime says. “It’s astonishing.”

_Like her eyes…_

Jaime generously ignores the girl rolling her eyes at him once more, and instead focuses on watching Brienne’s little dance around the machines, though he notes that the rhythm is different now, faster, more erratic than usual.

However, he abandons the thought once he sees Brienne looking up towards the platform above, wiping her sweaty brow with the back of her hand.

_She looks so happy_ , Jaime notes.

He almost forgot what Brienne looked like happy. These days, the tall woman whose eyes captivated him the first day she strode into the office looks on as sadly as he does, going about her work without the bounce in her step she once had.

_Everything is changed now. Thanks to me._  

“I have a habit of leaving the company last,” Jaime tells the girl-ghost. “I don’t know how many extra hours that woman cost me just because she wouldn’t leave work, staying long after the closing hours.”

It was their little game, if a strange one. Their relationship was always one of battle, about who’d give up first, and neither one was willing to give up on the challenge, which eventually led to some rather strange thing: A truce.

“I see,” the girl says, cocking an eyebrow at him. “A habit of staying in work for longer than necessary… strange to think that this is something you two share in.”

Jaime means to say something in return, but that is when he sees one of the valves turning on its own, when really, it shouldn’t, and white vapor starts to climb up from it.

And that is when he knows.

“That’s the night of the accident.”

Jaime already wants to shout when the machines start to spew steam in all directions and he can see Brienne walking over to the control panels to somehow stop the machines from overheating, but then stops himself, recalling the girl’s words:

_There is nothing you can do about it._

Instead, he watches as Brienne wades through the hot steam, trying to get the dead man’s switch on the panel to work, but even that thing has gone out of business at this point of time.

Brienne rushes over to the alarm, the sirens shrieking above their heads, before she proceeds up the ladder leading on top of the machine, all the while muttering to herself what part of the machines connects with which, working on a solution as she continues reciting every part of the machine that may cause the malfunction.

Soon, she stands on top of the thing and starts to kick against one of the pipes there.

“C’mon, we need to release some of the pressure, or else the thing will blow!” Brienne curses as she keeps kicking over and over again. “C’mon!”

“Shouldn’t she be getting out?” the girl questions, tilting her head to the side.

“She definitely should. The issue is that those vats Brienne works on operate under high pressure. They are not like the ones that Aerys used to try out some wildfire explosions. They are just to heat things up, but this vat is where we bring in the pressure needed for the production. Going out and watching the thing go up would potentially mean the whole factory blowing up – and people next door seeing their own ends coming near for that reason,” Jaime explains. “She is trying to protect the people.”

“And you,” the girl notes, nodding over to the platform, where Jaime can see himself approaching. He already means to say something to the ghost, but that is when a shout from Brienne takes up all of his attention, and Jaime watches in horror as Brienne manages to kick the pipe off to forcefully release some of the pressure that built up in the vat, white steam rushing out, only to slip on top of the vat.

It’s the same fear he felt that night that he now feels hammering against his chest as Brienne goes down.

“I should have stuck to my original plan,” Jaime mutters to himself as his past self just rushes right through him, as though he wasn’t there, because he isn’t, after all. His past version makes it to end of the platform and hurries down the ladder, taking three rungs at a time, before he climbs the ladder leading up to the vat where Brienne is, all the while calling her name, over and over again.

Up on the vat, Brienne tries to get up, but her leg got stuck underneath one of the valves that wouldn’t move, no matter how hard she tried to turn them before going for the pipe and the vat itself.

While the pipe releases some of the worst pressure, the machine still keeps overheating, which is why it’s only a matter of time until one of the valves just comes undone, the metal piece flying high in the air like bullets. The hot steam shoots out right next to her face, the force of it knocking her out cold.

Jaime swallows as he watches himself coming to the top of the platform, reaching out to her, tapping the side of Brienne’s cheek, calling out to her:

“Wake up, c’mon, wake up! Brienne, stay with me! Wench! C’mon! A valve can’t be the end of you! C’mon!”

“If I had been right in my mind, I would have gone for the power switch instead of the vat,” Jaime comments drily. “It was no guarantee to do something about it, but maybe it would have changed something.”

“Then why didn’t you?” the ghost asks, watching on.

“I didn’t think straight, easy as that,” Jaime answers, shaking his head, eyes fixed on the image of himself holding her, trying to get her free, away, to safety. “I just saw her being in danger, so I went down the ladder to help her… with whatever I had available.”

_It was instinct, simple as that._

He had to get her, and so he did.

That was all Jaime knew at that moment when he heard the alarm go off. The fear that she may have been killed by the valve exploding beside her face was so palpable that he could feel his heart stop beating for five beats, before it kicked back into action by beating five times as fast thereafter.

All rational thinking just ended, leaving just one operative for him: _Brienne_.  

“You know what is going to happen next, right?” Arya asks, her expression perfectly blank as she watches on.

Jaime nods his head. “I will get her leg free form under the big valve. In the process, my sleeve gets caught in the thing. Her leg was what actually kept the valve in place, but my hand didn’t do the trick because it was too small, or rather, small enough to send the valve flying open, twisting my hand so badly that no doctor could do much of anything to fix it again.”

“And after that… there was just pain,” he adds, watching on.

And the pain just wouldn’t end. It just kept getting worse, kept shifting shape, but never went away.

“I only ever heard of it later that Brienne found a way to bring the machine to a halt once she woke back up, but by that time, I was already out of it,” Jaime continues, looking at his past self, the fear in the man’s eyes, the despair, not yet knowing how his life is going to be twisted away just like his hand is going to be little time from now.

“Do you want to see that?” the girl asks, not looking at him.

“Do you leave me the choice?” He frowns.

Why would she?

“This time, yes,” she tells him. “As you said, you know what’s going to happen. You will be passed out and there is nothing to be learned from that going from here.”

“Then I’d rather move on,” Jaime says, his eyes stubbornly fixed on Brienne, lying on the metal ground, one side of her face colored in angry shades of red.

To this day, you can see the scar on her cheek thanks to that bloody incident. And Jaime always feels a pang of pain in his heart whenever he sees it.

That was because of him, too.

Because he didn’t think straight.

Because he didn’t plan.

Because he wasn’t careful enough.

_I wasn’t good enough. Yet again. I came too late. Yet again._

Jaime is glad for Needle to land in his hand this time, closing his eyes at once as the flux takes him away from that most painful day, and Brienne’s big blue eyes staring at him once it was over.

When he opens his eyes, he sees nothing but white, but not from the snow, but the inside of a hospital instead. Jaime knows at once what time period that must be.

“I slept for a long time,” Jaime comments, looking around a room he grew to hate so very much for the duration of his stay at this place, bound to bed, bound for surgeries that all led to the same result – amputation.

“Small wonder after the many surgeries,” the girl comments, slowly walking around the room, hands folded in her back again.

“That was such a mess,” he mutters as he draws closer, looking at himself on the bed. “Well, if anything good came of it, then it is that I finally knew who was friend and who was foe.”

“You mean to say?” the girl-ghost asks, walking around the white room, looking around curiously.

“Well, I once heard that you realize who your true friends are once you are hurt and in need. Only the real friends will be there for you. The others? They will send a card, at best,” Jaime answers, looking at his past still form on the bed, looking as though he was about to become a part of the white sheets.

The cables, the machines beeping, all of it feels surreal. Jaime always was in good health. That was one of the few good things he always saw, but even that was something misfortune kept eating away from him, nibbled until nothing but scar tissue remained, leaving him vulnerable to every bump against that useless stump of his. 

“In this particular case, it was more about the family, though,” Jaime goes on, eyes still set on his past self. “While it came a bit later, that was when I realized how far estranged I was from my family, safe for Tyrion. Cersei only showed up once throughout the whole damn time. She could barely look at me, only ever stared at my stump. I don’t know if she couldn’t deal with it to see me like this, but it’s not like she’s ever tried, really, not even after I was out of physio and the like, when I looked passable enough again. And Father… he was pissed that his golden boy had not only gone off the tracks he had chosen for him, but also was no longer _that_ golden.”

He looks own at his stump with loathing, then back on the thick bandages around his sleep self’s arm, concealing the reality of what he has now, this useless stump, the hand missing, the embodiment of that which he lost over the years.

“Tyrion was the only one who kept visiting daily. Father sent fancy flowers… as if that mattered. He couldn’t leave the company alone that long, he said… and truth be told, that is something I started to hate him for, along with his treatment of Tyrion,” Jaime says.

He was always the one family member trying to negotiate between Tyrion and the group of Father and Cersei. It was a constant back and forth. To Cersei, he spoke time and time again to remind her that this is their little brother and that he doesn’t deserve the misgivings she rewards him with. He told his father time and time again that Tyrion was not the monster he tried to make of him, that he was a capable businessman and that if he was right in his mind, he would have made use of Tyrion instead of focusing all of his efforts of bringing his “stubborn oldest son” to reason. Though Tywin Lannister never took any of his advices. And similarly, Jaime had to bridge between Tyrion and them, because that boy learned early on to hate them, despite seeking nothing more but their approval, their love. And so, Jaime was always running back and forth, trying to keep the harmony, the peace, but nothing helped. And so, after the accident, Jaime found the one liberation the loss of his hand ever came with – he no longer felt the need to bridge. He burned the bridge with Tyrion and him on this side, and his sister and father on the other.

Yet again, he was forced into making a choice that maybe Jaime should have made a long time ago, but didn’t find the courage to before.

_I always come too late._

“Understandable, I suppose,” the girl comments. “Your father’s a dick.”

“Yeah… well, once all that was done, I broke with them completely. And I can’t say I regret that… No, I don’t, I can’t….,” Jaime says, shaking his head. “But I do wonder. Why are you showing me this? That is actually something I well remember and didn’t… almost forget – since I assume that this is something you are up to with this whole show here, bringing back the memories I tried to hold back for so long.”

“I am up to _way_ more than that. Or you really think us ghosts are so easy to figure out?” she huffs. “As I said, I think you are one of the dense kind, so I reckon you need more pushing in the right direction… But anyway, the thing is that this is a time you don’t know, the time after Christmas that you spent sleeping.”

Jaime already wants to open his mouth to reply, but that is when the door opens behind him silently, and someone slips inside. Jaime can do nothing much but stare as he sees Brienne cautiously walking into the room, a thick plaster on her cheek, some bruises and angry red streaks reaching beyond the white bandage. Her left eye is still a bit bloodshot, and Jaime hates the sight of it. Her eyes are supposed to be blue, as clear and deep as the ocean, not that angry shade of red.

She isn’t supposed to have scars like that.

She isn’t supposed to scramble over to his bed with a limp, still recovering from the injury she sustained while her leg was stuck underneath the valve.

None of it was supposed to be.

And yet, it happened.

And yet, all if it happened.

And yet, there is nothing he can do to change it anymore.

And that is perhaps the worst pain of it all: the knowledge that he failed her and that there is no way of fixing it again.

“Wait, she came for visit once?” Jaime asks, once it occurs to him that this is a memory and not just a dream of some sort.

Brienne came by, when he always thought that she, understandably, kept away after the events.

“Daily,” the ghost corrects him, holding up her index finger.

“But… Tyrion never saw her. And he was there daily as well, nearly always,” Jaime argues, his eyes fixed on Brienne as she sits down by the bed silently. “I remember that… or rather, that he told me.”

“Well, you do the math. What time is it?” the girl-ghost argues, pointing at the window. It’s dark outside, no snow is falling, leaving the windows pitch-black as though someone poured tar over them.

“After the visiting hours most definitely,” he mutters pensively.

“She is friends with Margaery Tyrell, through Renly Baratheon. Remember her?” the girl questions.

“One of the nurses,” Jaime mumbles, still trying to wrap his head around all this.

“Margaery let her in after the visiting hours… and kept that little secret,” the girl tells him. “Just so that you know. Consider it a past Christmas present, if you will.”

“But why didn’t she ever visit… after that?” Jaime asks. “Why not… during day time?”

“You’ll see soon enough,” the girl answers, turning her attention back to the tall, blonde woman.

Jaime looks over to Brienne as well as she pulls one of the green plastic chairs back to sit down on it stiffly, hands folded tightly in her lap, chewing on her lower lip.

_She always does that when she is nervous._

“Hi,” Brienne begins, her voice almost not audible. Jaime motions closer to catch all of what she says, fearing to miss another detail, because, as it turns out, he missed so many things already.

“Margaery said that your surgery went well… however well a surgery of that sort can go, that is… I hope she is right and that you have no pain…,” Brienne goes on, but then shakes her head. “I don’t even know why I am talking to you. I mean, it’s not like you can hear me, but… I will blame the pain meds for it if anyone asks. So don’t you dare pass it on once you are back to consciousness again, alright?”

Jaime motions around to the other side of the bed to look at her, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. Brienne looks so beaten-up, not just physical but emotionally as well.

And he just wants it to end, but he knows it doesn’t.

_Because I am the primary reason why._

“They took the machine today, you know,” she goes on. “The vat, the valves, the panels, everything. They took it back to the company to investigate what went wrong… and promised us a new one ASAP. I had to try really hard not to both laugh and punch that guy when he said that. I asked them to maybe leave it a bit longer… they thought I was insane. I know that look… I didn’t care. I wanted to check for myself, you see. Try to find out what went wrong exactly. Because I still don’t know just went wrong. The overheating… it makes sense, no matter how often I go back over the events. There was nothing wrong… until everything was.”

“Even at that time already,” Jaime sighs heavily.

“What do you mean?” the girl asks.

Jaime looks over, no longer surprised that she is right on the other side of the bed all of a sudden. “Brienne is _obsessed_ with that machine ever since. As though knowing what went wrong would fix anything. There is nothing to be fixed about this, and she won’t get it no matter how often I tell her just that. What happened, happened, but Brienne doesn’t stop. She never does. The Seven have blessed and cursed her with the most stubborn mind I have ever encountered.”

“Hm, I know some people quite like that,” the girl notes, but then goes back to watching the scene before her as Brienne raises her voice again: “You see, I don’t trust these people, not anymore. You know how it works with those investigations? They write something in the reports that sounds fitting enough and then… case closed. They will stop productions and may do a call-back on the other machines of that kind, to make it seem like they are protecting the people after such a grand malfunction. They likely wouldn’t bother with that if it weren’t for _you_ having fallen victim to it, because of the name you bear. They know what is on the line now.”

“That is very true,” Jaime sighs, grimacing. “They only ever acted that much and that fast because I am the son of Tywin Lannister. And that meant they couldn’t try to just go to court against some nobody who doesn’t have the money for a lawyer to prove that their machine had a malfunction instead of running with what is normally the excuse – that it was human failure. No, they had to agree that it was a malfunction on their side. My Father would have annihilated them otherwise. So… they acted fast and tried not to start a fuss about it, tried to keep it was quiet as possible.”

Every man for himself – and every company for itself, too.

The compensations they covered were truly to cover it up.

And Jaime let it happen, because it made no difference anymore, not him, at least. He paid his hand for it, and there is no money in the world that is going to bring it back.

“I think I saw something, short before it went off… from the corner of my eye… If I am right, then there was something wrong with the scale, you see. I think that the malfunction was about the scales, that they showed the wrong temperatures and pressures, so that the machine could heat up as much as it did without the instruments shutting down according to the safety protocol… But I just can’t say for certain. It was too fast. If only I could… if only they had not taken it, then maybe I could have figured it out. Maybe I could have seen it, had I compared the scales, then maybe you wouldn’t have been…,” Brienne whispers, almost whimpers, but then stops, bowing her head.

Jaime grimaces, swallowing thickly. “Why can’t she let it go?”

_Why can’t she just move on and try to be happy again? Isn’t it enough that I continue to be stuck in my own vicious cycles? Why her, too?_

“Well, you tell me, aren’t you an expert on the matter?” the girl from the other end of the bed huffs.

Jaime narrows his eyes at the ghost, who suddenly disappears from the other side of the bed, only to reappear sitting on top of the shelf above the headrest, dangling her short legs over the edge.

“You can’t let things go unless you have closure,” the ghost goes on to say. “Like you can’t close a door that has a doorstopper stuck in it. There’s always a crack of the door that keeps you from shutting it.”

“Well, the case _was_ closed. We both got injured, the machine was removed, we got a new one, and Brienne watches over it like a hawk ever since. I don't know how this is not… a closed case. How more final than this can it get?” Jaime argues, holding out his stump to the girl-ghost, anguish and remorse heavy in his voice, but the ghost remains unimpressed, continuing to dangle her legs over the edge, as though it was all a game.

And perhaps it really is, and Jaime just never knew he was a pawn in it, getting moved around by some higher power having fun at his expenses – and of the people he cares about.

“How was it for you and your mother? When she died? Did you feel the need to see her one last time?” the girl then asks, which rips Jaime out of his thoughts completely.

He never thought about it that way, really.

To him, the factory accident was tragic and shouldn’t ever have happened.

But Jaime wanted to believe that there was a way of closing the case if he kept it shut, but apparently he didn’t do much of a good job at it, considering that Brienne still keeps probing at that doorstopper to steal back inside.

And with his mother? Jaime needed to see her one last time to know that it was real, to know that Joanna Lannister was… _over_.

“We need the final words in a chapter in order to be able to close it. Only then can we move on to the next part of the story,” the girl tells him. “We can’t move on if we are constantly pulled back to where we stand, if we are on a leash of locks and chains.”

“Are we yet again back to wisecracking?” Jaime scoffs, hugging his chest defensively, suddenly feeling a surge of cold spreading throughout him.

“I am talking from experience.”

“What experience would you have?” he argues. “You are a girl.”

“A girl who has seen more than you can even begin to grasp,” she replies. “A girl who ho had a list that she kept repeating to herself each night, not realizing how that was her doorstopper, was what kept her from ending the prayer and moving on to a new chapter. I may look like only just a girl, but I am many, I am an old soul that has seen the world through many people’s eyes.”

Jaime blinks, swallowing the comment that was on the tip of his tongue before she threw that answer at him, leaving him speechless.

The girl-ghost points at Brienne with sheathed Needle. “She stands still.”

She then points the sword at Jaime. “And about you, I don’t even want to get started. For that I don’t even have to talk from my own experience. For that… I just have to see that which is right before me.”

Jaime grimaces, but then has his attention drawn back to Brienne as she starts talking once more. “But I promise you, that won't ever happen again. I will see to that. I swear it.”

“Which means a lot. That woman is idly focused on her vows. She is a woman of tradition,” Jaime says with a sad smile. “And honor.”

Jaime found himself always fascinated by that. He thought he was silly for ever caring about those knightly virtues, the tales he could still remember from his children’s books. However, Brienne proved to be a strange sort of kindred spirit, once she came to the realization that Jaime Lannister, against the odds of his nickname of the Kingslayer, against the odds of his snarky, sarcastic nature that turned more and more bitter over the years, was actually much more like her than what meets the eye.

“You seem to think alike, I assume?” the ghost notes.

“I suppose so. There was a time when I didn’t give too much on it, but then she came and Brienne, she… reminded me of that, I suppose. Of the man I wanted to be… before the _Aerys Affair_ , before I… got lost for the first time,” Jaime mutters, watching the tall woman nervously fiddling with her fingers. “But then… I seem to have forgotten again.”

Because he had promised to himself to see to it that she doesn’t sport that expression anymore. Brienne had joined the factory with just that expression on her face almost all the time, safe for when she felt like winning after the trial work was over and she signed her papers. At first, Jaime thought she was just sour in character and never really laughed at much of anything.

That was until he took her out for a drink for the first time, thinking of it more as an experiment than anything else. Jaime wanted to test the waters, only to get sucked into a vast ocean he thought he could stay at forever. In the wake of that experiment, the two spent one of the most pleasant evenings he comes to remember, talking about whatever came to mind, finding some things to wildly disagree about, and surprising themselves and each other with how much they actually agreed upon, which was not at all what he had on the agenda.

Though perhaps that was the magic of it – that he didn’t plan for it, and neither did she. It was unplanned, and that was what made it so very real, to the point that Jaime thought that, at last, this could mark the end of the path he had been walking with aching shoulders ever since killing Aerys. Jaime felt like himself again, in a way that he had not since pushing the man off the ladder.

Brienne of Tarth laughed, she smiled, she didn’t hide it as she nursed her beer, her tongue somewhat loosened up from the alcohol, allowing for more of the less reserved woman to shine through the surface of a pig-headed stubborn woman who infamously beat the crap out of a supplier who creeped up on one of Jaime’s female employees once she saw that he was trying to get under her skirt without the woman’s consent. However, that night at the bar, Jaime saw just the woman who was surprisingly soft-spoken all of a sudden, who talked about the hobbies she liked, talked about it with a smile and a shine in her eyes that kept him pulled into every word she spoke, as though it was the realest thing he witnessed since all the surreal _Aerys Affair_ had fully unfolded.

_A miracle, one could have thought, but it was real, as real as it could get._

And back then, of that Jaime was certain, he realized that he didn’t want to see that sad face again, which seemed to fade away the more he talked to her, even if Brienne scowled and hit him often enough because he made a sport of it to tease her without abandon, calling her “wench” all the while, fully aware just how much she hated that nickname. Because, or so it seemed, she no longer felt alone at the company, even if it was just the company of the boss slash occasional asshole Jaime Lannister.

And yet, that turned out to be one of those promises he couldn’t keep.

Yet again, he failed.

Failed her.

“And I am… I am still so sorry, Jaime,” Brienne then goes on to say, snapping Jaime out of his rather pleasant memories of her laughter, back to the reality of her marred face with tears now running down freely the side of them, seeping into the bandage on one side, trailing down her cheek and her neck on the other.

Jaime can feel his phantom hand twitch at that, wanting to move, wanting to do something, but the truth is that there is nothing to be done anymore.

_If there ever was._

“I am sorry. This is because of me and I don’t know how to fix it. They had to amputate your whole hand after all. They couldn’t save it. And all that because I got my leg caught under that stupid valve. All that because I didn’t see the mistake and I can’t fix it. They even took the machine so I can’t even see just what went wrong to know to fix it in the future. I am sorry. Just sorry,” she says, covering her big blue eyes with her right hand.

Jaime extends his left hand to reach out to her, but it goes right through her.

“What did I tell you?” the girl scolds him from atop the cupboard.

“Shut up, Casper,” Jaime snaps, looking back to Brienne crying again. “This is such a mess.”

“ _Mess_ is likely an understatement, but hey, I am not the one with the haunting,” the ghost argues, gesturing at herself.

“No, you haunt instead,” Jaime huffs.

“I rather haunt than being haunted.”

“To think that everything could have taken such a different turn if only…,” he mutters, eyes on Brienne’s crying form.

“If only _what_?” the girl asks, leaning forward slightly.

“I… I finally wanted to ask her out on a date that night,” Jaime admits, surprising himself with the ease the words roll out of his mouth with all of a sudden.

He kept that to himself so very long, a secret Jaime kept perhaps even more guarded than all of the _Aerys Affair_.

But then again, who to tell if not the ghost haunting him? Who is the ghost girl going to tell it anyway?

“ _Finally_?” the shapeshifting ghost asks, tilting her head.

“We’d only ever gone out for drinks a couple of times, after work, the way colleagues do,” Jaime explains. “And I always had to force her, the stubborn creature she is. But this time, I wanted to take her out, for real.”

Jaime had carefully planned. He wanted to do things right. He wanted to finally move on and start, yes, a new chapter. Jaime never would have cared for how some people may have whispered about them, had she said yes. He didn’t give a damn for his own reputation ever since Aerys died, and he wasn’t going to start back then, so he only felt ever the more assured that this was the right thing to do, that this was his way back to reality.

_But then… it ended before it ever truly began._

“I wanted to take her out for dinner. Really fancy, not just for something fast to eat downtown. I had already made arrangements, ordered a table in a fine restaurant. I even had bothered to get her something to wear in case Brienne would have come me with the excuse that she didn’t have the clothes for fancy dinner. I think I got her measurements right, actually.”

A blue suit, with trousers, blazer and all, made of satin, Jaime remembers. It would have looked great on her, he is sure. It would have brought out the color in her eyes and still would have left her feeling comfortable enough because it was no classical dress, but something he saw her wear to what he learned was Renly’s birthday party.

When Jaime saw her leave that one time, dressed in a fine suit in a light blue color, he can still recall how angrily he fumed in his office thereafter, taking one full hour before closing down and walking home fuming even more. Because the wench kept telling him that she never dressed up to the occasion of much of anything. And there Brienne of Tarth went, in a suit that she might just as well have worn to a nice dinner with him. Oh, how furious he was. The anger faded somewhat once Jaime learned that she had gone to Renly’s birthday party, and while she had a crush on him during her younger years, it faded once Brienne came to terms with it that Renly Baratheon is _absolutely_ not into girls, not even the mannish ones.

And so, the suit seemed like just the right tool to corner her and force him and her out of their routines that they had gotten too comfortable with over time, because neither one was willing to make the first step, to wherever it may have led them, they stuck to beers and listening to the games, the old jukebox in their favorite bar. Jaime wanted to set something into motion, wanted to change course, to finally arrive somewhere.

_But yet again, I came too late…_

“But of course, the woman worked overtime even that evening, and she is always so absorbed into the task that I didn’t want to interrupt her until she was done… so I had to stay until Brienne was finally finished, but then… the accident happened…,” Jaime recounts, stopping himself towards the end, his smile completely fading at that. “And then… it was over.”

Because that was the end of all happiness.

“And you never asked her out since,” the girl states, not really a question, because surely she knows that.

That is part of the unchangeable past already after all.

Jaime shakes his head slowly, not looking at the ghost. “No.”

“Why?”

“I couldn’t… I… I was a cripple, _am_ a cripple. Why would I, a cripple… Why would she take a cripple?” Jaime blurts out. “Why would she take someone like me?”

Why take someone that broken, caught up in himself? Who would be that insane to do such a thing?

Jaime shakes his head, his eyes stinging. He wouldn’t even allow himself to think those thoughts, and yet, here he is, saying out loud what he kept locked away so deeply within himself.

“Well, you tell me, how comes she takes a cripple who isn’t even awake to hear it?” Arya argues, gesturing at Brienne.

“She felt guilty for it for a long time,” Jaime says defensively. “She takes that whole honor business too seriously.”

“Right, _honor_ ,” the ghost huffs. Jaime looks at her with a grimace. “What now?”

“Nothing, nothing. But perhaps consider this: There is guilt and there is guilt, mingled with something like _that_ …,” Arya says, pointing to Brienne leaning over unconscious Jaime, kissing his brow before the tall woman bolts out of the hospital room as fast as her injured leg allows her to.

Jaime stares at the door through which she disappeared.

_Did that just happen?!_

“All this time I thought…,” he mutters.

That she wouldn’t want him after what happened, that Brienne wouldn’t want him for what he is now. Brienne was so distant after that. She could barely look at him, averted her gaze from his, focused on the machines to the point that they seemed to be the only thing on her mind.

His sister was disgusted by the stump. Most people kept their distance from him because Jaime knows he was pretty nasty after the loss of his hand.

Brienne was different about it, but he thought that after that, all chances were gone, had gone up in the steam that had surrounded him by the time the vat was short before exploding.  

He thought Brienne blamed him for what happened at the factory. For having purchased the machine, for not going to the power switch instead of heedlessly heading up to where she was.

He thought that there was nothing there thereafter, that the spark never caught flame, but died in the steam of the engines of the machines that almost took both their lives that night. Jaime didn’t even begin to think that she could bring herself to like him like this, not after that experience, without ever having dated, not like this, not at all.

And as it appears, he thought wrong for too long for it to ever be a way of fixing it.

Because he thought it so long that it’s long since part of the unchangeable past now.

“All this time you never asked,” the ghost argues, hopping off the shelf, though she doesn’t land on the ground there, but instead pops up right next to him on the other side. “It’s time for us to go back.”

She holds up Needle to him.

“Home?” he asks.

The girl says nothing at that, but simply holds out Needle to him again.

The white of the room twists into the flux of snowflakes again, and once he opens his eyes again, he is back in his dimly lit fireplace room, right by the armchair, the iron bar lying abandoned on the floor.

“So? Any wise words for me to bear in mind?” he asks the girl, feeling tired, feeling raw and sore all over, as though someone tore back up all of those wounds he thought were sufficiently covered in scar tissue by now.

“Having been in bad places myself, there is actually something I think I can share,” the girl tells him.

“Oh ho, which would be?” Jaime asks with a smirk.

“Memories are good and bad, and mostly, there are more bad than good. Some you will remember, while others you keep pushing away. But you _have_ to remember, or else those chapters won’t ever come to an end and no new ones can begin.”

“If I end them, it’s over, too,” Jaime argues stubbornly.

“No, you just leave empty spaces still to be filled,” she replies. “You have to remember, but you have to forget _the regret_. That only pulls you back into the last chapter. I know that much from my own experience.”

“You do?” he asks.

“I tried to forget my past by becoming someone else, many someone elses, until at last… I was no one,” she says, pointing at her changing face. “But in the end, I just couldn’t deal with my own losses and tragedies. With my own past.”

“Did you finish the chapters, then?” Jaime asks quietly.

The girl’s face returns to normal as she answers, “I am a ghost that haunts. You tell me, does that sound like a Happy Ending to you?”

“Not really.”

“Ever the more a reason to hurry and wrap this up, that’s all I have to say. The next ghost will come an hour from now,” the ghost tells him, flashing a smirk that could be hers or could belong to someone completely else, Jaime isn’t sure. She unsheathes Needle, holds it above her head, and with a white flash of light coming from the blade she disappears, leaving Jaime in the dimly lit room again, alone, with nothing but the past no longer changeable looming in the shadows.

Jaime falls back in the armchair, letting out a heavy sigh. He leans forward and buries his face in his hands, or rather his hand and stump, feeling wetness against his skin, the tears now freely falling, mourning all those memories long since forgotten, the good memories lost, the past that he can no longer change, the lost chances he left neglected, slept through, didn’t see.

He cries for that which he lost, that which he could have gained, if only past was more flexible, if only you could bend it more, but the past just breaks.

It breaks you.

And Jaime feels like it is going to break him, too, because at this point, he can already feel the weight of the chains around his throat.

And all he can see ahead is a door slightly ajar, letting in no light.


	4. The Ghost of Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime is visited for the third time that night. 
> 
> And yet again, he is in for some many surprises, some unpleasant realizations, while at the same time Jaime tries to come to terms with what seems to be the painful lesson in it all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for sticking around! 
> 
> This chapter continues shredding mercilessly. I may or may not have stolen one bit from a movie, but then you can consider that movie thereby shredded as well, LOL. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you are going to enjoy this chapter.
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Tears long since dried on his cheeks, Jaime spent quite a few minutes by now, looking at his stump, twisting it in the meager moonlight coming through the window in his back.

He still can’t quite wrap his head around this. While Jaime gave up trying to reason, trying to reach a logical conclusion as to how this must be an alcohol-induced fantasy and not an actual haunting by actual ghosts, his mind won’t stop reeling.

Because if what he is going through right now, if what he sees is real, then Jaime is ever the more convinced that this trial is one he can no longer win. While the girl-ghost may have had some valuable lessons for him, they all related to the past, to a time he can no longer affect, can no longer return to beside being made an onlooker for a time.

And on that same note, if he wants to have a shot at winning this trial and sparing himself eternity being Aerys’s chain buddy, Jaime reckons he has to come to grips with what the lesson to be learned is meant to be. But at this point? Jaime has no clue what the take-away is supposed to be.

Forgive and forget? _C’est la vie_? Is that supposed to be it?

But how do you move on when you don’t even know how? If you didn’t find a way for three years no, maybe even longer, because even that short moment of feeling like he was finally leaving his vicious cycles behind led to total disaster, then how do you find it in a single night?

How do you leave something behind that has framed your entire life for years now?

How do you move on when everything is a constant reminder of the times that went wrong?

How do you move on when you just have to look at your right arm to be reminded of the time all future went out the window, went up in a cloud of steam, in a world filled with pain and regret?

Because right at this moment, Jaime just feels ever the more like a failure, only ever reminded of the chances he left neglected, the chances he didn’t use fast enough, smart enough, good enough, to move forward while he still could.

Those chances? They don’t return, no matter if he calls them to mind or not, no matter what the shapeshifting girl-ghost meant to tell him.

They are gone. That is the point. They are gone, they are not coming back. He can call them to mind, alright, and perhaps come to terms with the chances neglected, but how does that create chances for him now? Jaime just doesn’t know how to move on going from where he stands, and has stood for what feels like a small eternity.

Though perhaps that is the actual uptake, the big reveal? That he is bound to fail no matter what he does? That the chains are just out there waiting for him, ready to tie him to that one demon from the past that controlled him for so long… or perhaps never stopped controlling him altogether.

Aerys said it. That even now, he belongs to him. And perhaps the madman, or rather mad ghost, was right about that one thing after all, and this trial is just preparing him for the inevitable.

And maybe… that is for the best? Considering the pain Jaime has caused the people he cared about for the past years, it might be for the best if he was just gone. Maybe Tyrion would stop trying to save a man who doesn’t take the hand held out to him in support, as logical reason would normally demand it from him.

Maybe Brienne would be best off if she left the factory, left him in his own misery, and tried her luck elsewhere. She could make it anywhere with her talent. And who knows, perhaps the right guy, one who can make her smile like Jaime once was able to over beer and old music but can no longer?

Perhaps that is what this whole visitation is about. Not about Christmas, not about him moving on with life, but moving on from life, so to save the others from his own damnation. To prepare him for the inevitable, for Aerys and the chains, the afterlife that he deserves.

_This might just as well be my last night in this world – and even that proves to be a chance I left neglected, making nothing of it, not using my chance to say my goodbyes the proper way. Though it might be for the best… to just fade away, steal away so no one realizes, so that I am soon forgotten, and people can move on going from there._

Jaime tries to feel relief at that, but he finds his entire body shaking from the cold having his heart in its clutches, because no matter what, his body, against better judgment, still means to hold on to a life that seems so emptied-out by now.

A look over to the old wooden longcase clock reveals that it is just a few more seconds before the next hour strikes. Jaime closes his eyes, lets out a shaky breath as the clock starts to ring, filling the entire room with its melody.

Time to move on, it seems, Jaime thinks to himself, sitting up straighter in his seat, feeling somewhat resolved to just get over with it, whatever the result may be.

This time rather timely, a flash of white light erupts in the room, momentarily blinding him. Jaime blinks, trying to make out what or who is hiding in the beam, but beside a silhouette of a woman, that much he can say, he can’t make out much of anything.

“Are you the Ghost of Christmas Present?” he calls out as the light dies out, but her face remains hidden behind a white gleam of light, making it impossible to tell the exact features of the ghost materialized in front of him, wearing a white, floaty gown with bell-shaped sleeves, wearing no shoes or jewelry.

“Yes,” the ghost says in a gentle voice that almost sounds like she is singing the words.

“So you will show me what I messed up recently, huh?” Jaime huffs, putting up his defenses, readying himself for what seems inevitable now. “As if I didn’t know that part.”

“I will show you what you must know,” the ghost says. “Take a hold of my dress so we can be on our way.”

Jaime, reckoning the routine to be similar, takes a hold of the ghost’s dress, finding himself indeed in the same flux of snowflakes that take him away.

Once he opens his eyes again, Jaime is outside a house during winter time.

 _Probably this bloody Christmas_ , Jaime thinks to himself. _What other time would it be, huh?_

At least some things seem to be easier to come to grips with during this visitation.

“That’s Tyrion’s place,” Jaime says once he recognizes the building. He motions over to the window, surprised to have his younger brother staring out of the window from the other side, but not seeing him at all.

“He still can’t see me, can he?” Jaime asks the ghost, already anticipating the answer that inevitably comes, “No.”

Jaime shakes his head as he turns back around to glance through the window.

_It makes no difference anymore anyway._

Jaime watches his little brother hops back off the small bench set in front of the window, but keeps glancing outside as snow keeps falling. The older man tilts his head when he detects movement from the other end of the room, surprised to see a woman approaching Tyrion from behind.

She is beautiful to the eye, no doubt, lightly tanned skin, dark hair, deep eyes, a cunning sort of smirk. The woman leans over his younger brother’s shoulders, kissing him on the cheek. “He’s not going to come, my lion. It’s alright, we can make it official another time.”

“I know all that, but I hoped that he would come by after all. I'd want him to be the first one to know. You know that this matters to me much, no matter how much of a pain in the arse that man proves to be,” Tyrion argues, letting out a sigh, tapping his hand against her arm, which she wrapped around him. “He’s the only one I know to care about this. He is the only one I care about, well, telling.”

Jaime blinks, not quite believing what he sees and hears.

_That is Tyrion’s girlfriend? Tyrion has a girlfriend?!_

The self-proclaimed King of Bachelors never has girlfriends. He has acquaintances and escort ladies, as he recounts whenever asked about the matter.

_I shall be damned._

And he shall be damned as well, because Jaime is sure that he would have remembered the girl’s name, if Tyrion had ever brought it up to him. He never introduced them to each other, never brought her along to the factory or when he came to Jaime’s mansion to yet again talk about how he has to move on.

But Jaime stops himself then, taking a step back.

It’s actually small wonder that Tyrion never bothered to introduce him to her. Jaime was not very sociable since the accident, so Tyrion probably did what he has always been good at: Damage control.

_I am the damage, always… though it may end tonight. And perhaps that is the one fortune grant. Maybe that is my Christmas present to you, little brother?_

“What’s her name?” Jaime asks the ghost.

“Shae,” the shining woman answers.

“So… he wanted me to come to that get-together to have me meet his new girlfriend?” Jaime concludes, his mouth standing open. “He cheated and told me a lie.”

And he didn’t see that, didn’t see through that, was too busy going through the reports, trying not to make the same mistakes twice, only ending up making new ones all the while.

_And I turned him down…_

“The woman he fell in love with, yes,” the ghost confirms.

“In love?” Jaime repeats with a frown.

Tyrion Lannister – in love. That is something Jaime has to come to terms with first. His little brother always told him that he was only ever out for short acquaintances, no more, no less.  Whenever they had beers just out on that patio Jaime stands on right now, and they ended up talking about their failed love lives, Tyrion was always the one to say first that he was not made of the stuff that it takes to build steady, long-lasting relationships with.

“I am the King of Bachelors. That title has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” was all that Tyrion ever said to him when Jaime pointed it out to him, sipping his beer, looking out on the small garden.

“In love, truly,” the ghost affirms. “For all I can see at present. Whether that is going to stay so in the future? That is not my time to tell.”

“How long does this go?” Jaime asks, his eyes fixed on Tyrion. “Or is that out of your time’s reach as well?”

“Half a year, maybe a bit longer,” the woman in white answers. “Or so I gathered from what they have been talking about.”

“Half a year… my brother has a girl he loves for half a year and I know nothing of it,” Jaime mutters, pulling away from the window. Cold clutches at him, and it’s not because he feels actual cold, but a cold from within his soul. His eyes start to glisten again. “Because I never asked. Because I never cared.”

_And now it seems to be over and I might go without him ever knowing that I would have cared, had I known…_

He looks at the ghost almost pleadingly. “Just what happened to me? What have I become to be like this?”

Jaime would do anything for his brother. He would die for that little dwarf with alcoholic tendencies, without a second of hesitation. But he can’t bring himself to spend stupid Christmas with him?

_Where is the sense in that?_

“Grief, loss, self-blame, trauma. Things that make us blind to other people’s needs and wants, and even our own,” the ghost says in a soft voice that would be comforting to Jaime if not for the cold taking a hold of his heart right at this moment. “There are powers far beyond our reach that keep clutching at us while we speak and try to live our lives. And sometimes, we manage to escape, but other times… we keep being caught up in it.”

“I didn’t keep my promises,” he mumbles.

The ghost tilts her head. “He doesn’t begrudge you for it, you know. I can tell that much.”

“Because he is my brother… and likely a better one at it than his big brother ever proved to be,” Jaime argues, tugging at his shirt, right above his heart.

“He is no innocent little creature. He has his own problems and fallacies,” the ghost argues. “We all do. That is what unites us in this one time we call the present. None of us is perfect. We all fail, and we keep failing.”

“I should have tried harder,” Jaime insists, tears in his eyes, his fingers curling tighter and tighter around his shirt. “I never wanted him to feel like I don't love him or that I don’t care for him. Father and Cersei did that enough. I never… and now _this_ …”

It’s all too late anyway. This is the present. And the present will be past by the time he opens his eyes again. Jaime can’t change the past, he can’t change the present.

_So why do you keep showing me all that which I can’t affect anymore?!_

“You were hurt. He understands that, you see?” the woman in white tells him.

“So what?” he asks.

What does it matter if Tyrion understands it? The man is smart enough to have it all figured out. He probably looked up the psychological terms for it already by the time that Jaime was still lying in hospital. It’s small wonder to him that his little brother has it all figured out, but that doesn’t do away with the present situation wherein he failed him and continues to fail him, still.

“You have to see the good in this,” the Ghost of Christmas Present argues, her voice almost too soothing for Jaime to bear, because it starts to irritate him.

He doesn’t feel like he should be soothed, should be comforted.

“What _is_ good about this? My brother is miserable because of me. Everyone around me is miserable because I am a miserable pain in the ass after the loss of my hand,” Jaime argues in a shaky voice, glancing back down on his stump. “Everyone is miserable because of me – myself included. What’s the good in that?”

“You carry a great deal of weight on your shoulders ever since. All the blame, all the shame, the regret… those things are heavy, so very heavy,” she sighs. “They threaten to tear you down, right at this moment, right as we speak.”

“Like those chains,” Jaime swallows. “Aerys’s chains.”

“Like those chains, yes.”

Jaime looks back to the window another time. “My little brother has a girlfriend and he loves her and I know nothing of it.”

He watches as Shae holds Tyrion a little tighter – and he can tell that his little brother is fighting for composure.

Jaime looks at the ghost again, shocked to see outlines of her face at last, the light shielding it from view beginning to fade, until at last, he can see it.  

“M, mother?” Jaime gapes.

She smiles at him sadly. “That is what _you_ make me look like.”

“I do?”

“That is the way it goes. We are older than your mother ever was, by far. To the point that we have a hard time remembering just when we began and ended… or started over new,” the ghost explains. “All I know is that I was there before Past, because without Present, Past cannot come into existence. And now that we are all in the world, we rely on each other. One cannot do without the other, one cannot be without the other. Past build the paths, I walk them alongside those on the search, and Future guides the way ahead, past the hill that you have to climb throughout your life, which are all but fractions for us, moments in time… and beyond the hill, Past and I are rushing, trying to catch up, because it is a journey that just never ends.”

Jaime blinks at her, trying to process all of this, while at the same time trying to stick to his plan, if you can even call it that, to simply accept, to move on, beyond that hill if need be, if only that finally puts an end to the suffering of the people he cares about.

“I suppose you want me to bear this shape because you never got to tell her goodbye. Because that is a part of the past that still rings into the present, whether you want to or not, because the lines are not nearly as clearly cut as people make them out to be, you see,” the ghost tells him in a voice that sounds just like hers, and yet, somewhat different. The ghost doesn’t have her attitude, but she has her face, her voice, and the light with which Joanna brought light even to the darkest places. “We all just keep running towards a future beyond the hill, not knowing what lies on the other side.”

“I need closure,” Jaime mutters.

“Exactly.”

 _I need closure for them_ , he adds to himself, but does not say the words out loud.

“So… what else is on the list? Will you show me some party next? One that I have missed, too? I honestly think I have seen enough after this. I should have tried harder. I should have…,” Jaime whispers, tears in his eyes, still, but the ghost stops him this time, softly so, “You still have to see some things if that is what you think. Or else I would not have done my job, and that I cannot let happen.”

“Why?”

“Because I need to move forward to,” she tells him. “Because in contrast to you, my past is quite something else.”

“In how far?”

“I no longer have it, really, not completely. I know it’s there, but I only ever get glimpses of it as I watch the presents of the people. Because theirs is so much more tied to their past than they even know.”

“Well, perhaps that is the healthiest option, just being able to forget all about it,” Jaime mutters.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that, no,” she argues. “I have spent… so much past I no longer call my own watching the present times of others, and you would have no idea how wonderfully the past framed the way for them.”

“Or horribly for others,” he comments.”

“True, but in my experience… even the horror can bring forth… light.”

He frowns, watching the woman smile only to herself, the shine around her face becoming ever the more intense at the thought she seems to be having.

“Take ahold of my dress, we must be on our way again,” she says, nodding at the white train that almost completely merges with the freshly fallen snow. Jaime grabs the dress, and just like that, he is back in the flux again, white and blue rushing past him, taking time and space away along with them.

To his surprise, the next destination on his list is apparently… a pub.

 _But not just any pub,_ he thinks to himself, a smirk creeping up his lips.

“That’s where Brienne and I used to go to after work all the while, to have a drink or start another fight by competing over darts or what not,” Jaime muses, looking around, listening to familiar sounds, the folk music playing over an old jukebox that looks like it’s from another time entirely.

Those were the truly better times. It was so easy back then. Or at least he thought it was. Because Jaime waited for too long, or so he had to realize, and regrets now ever the more. He could have asked her out how many times by now, if only he had acted faster? Maybe that whole mess wouldn’t have happened, then. Because he would have just interrupted Brienne in her daily routine before that. Maybe he would have told her to leave work aside and have dinner with him. Perhaps, by that time, they would have gone home together instead of him dutifully escorting her to her doorsteps whenever they had a beer at the pub to watch the games.

After all, honor compelled him, or so Jaime always told Brienne with a smile that was only ever returned with an awkward grimace that had him grin ever the harder.

But now this is the reality. Scars and regrets. Immobility. Being stuck because he can’t move past himself, can’t move on, is stuck in place, stuck in time, awaiting the chains.

_So how do you move forward when you already didn’t manage by the time it was almost too easy?_

Jaime can’t help but stare once his eyes catch sight of the familiar thatch of blonde hair, sitting in the corner furthest away from everyone around, nursing her beer in all silence, looking as miserable as he recalls in some of his darkest memories.  

“What is Brienne doing here?” he asks, almost automatically drawing closer to where she is sitting, nursing her beer silently, in just the spot they used to occupy when they would watch the games together, heavily debating on what tactic the Kingsguard should take to make a touchdown at last.

“Drinking beer?” the woman in white offers.

Jaime tries hard not to roll his eyes at that. “I can see that.”

“Well, then perhaps you shouldn’t ask the Ghost of Christmas Present to tell you what is going on right before your eyes,” she argues, though her voice, contrary to the first Ghost of Christmas who came to visit him tonight, is yet again about as soothing as his mother’s used to be. Which is why he can’t help but wonder at that moment if, perhaps, the Ghost of Christmas Present actually spoke the truth when she claimed that she somehow tries to find a past not hers to slip into, if only for a while, because her past belongs to Past.

“But why is she here? Why isn’t she at home? Celebrating?” Jaime goes on to ask, gesturing at Brienne sitting right before him, though she can’t see him, doesn’t take note of his presence – because he isn’t actually there, he is back at his apartment, likely fast asleep in his armchair, right next to the bottle of booze he should have poured down the drain and the iron bar on the other side of the piece of furniture.

_Why isn’t she moving on while she still can?_

“You are not the only one who hasn’t celebrated since that night,” the ghost points out to him.

“She…,” Jaime stammers, looking back at Brienne.

Jaime couldn’t bring himself to celebrate a day that repeatedly brought him so much sorrow, trauma, pain, and regret, but he thought that he was the only one, or at the very least, that there was a chance for Brienne to overcome these things.

_She is so strong, stronger than anyone I have met in a lifetime._

He thought that if she didn’t manage, then no one would, and as it appears… no one does.

“Guilt consumes her as much as it seems to consume you,” the ghost says. “I can see that much even from my spot here in present.”

“That can’t be, though. It was an accident. I always told her. Over and over again. The machine had a glitch of some sort, whatever it was now. I told her time and time again that it was the machines,” Jaime argues.

He never said that she was at fault, Jaime made sure of that one thing even in his darkest hours where he found himself caring about no one and nothing.

Because Brienne wasn’t at fault, she never was.

Even at his worst he didn’t say that for only just a split second, let alone believe.  

_So how comes Brienne thinks that? How comes she keeps standing still even now?_

“She _knows_ all that of course, _rationally_ , that is, but that doesn’t make her blame herself any less,” the ghost argues. “Feelings are rarely rational, I learned. But they are just as real, just as immediate as is everything surrounding us right at the moment in which we live.”

“The woman should know better, I told her that it was the machines,” Jaime says, shaking his head, feeling pain shoot up his right arm as his phantom hand seems to agree, recalling the pain of the valve twisting his hand off as though it was made of rubber that just tore under too many turn-arounds.

“Did you ever tell her that it wasn’t her fault, though?” the ghost asks.

“I told her it was the machine’s fault,” Jaime insists. “Never hers.”

“But did you ever say these words? That it’s not her fault? Even today?” the ghost questions.

Jaime wants to retort yet again that it was the machines and that he always made her aware of that circumstance, but then he stops himself, contemplating. He never told her that one simple thing: “It’s not your fault.”

Because like so many things, he took that for granted that she knew.

“I… no. I thought it was clear,” Jaime admits. “I thought Brienne understood that. Because we always argued about the machines, not us.”

It was always about the factory, the machines, the scales, the switches, the valves, the vat, but not about them. Ever since the accident, they somehow cancelled what they once had out of the equation, tried to wipe up the mess the machine caused and come to terms with that, but about them? About what maybe could have been if not for such lousy timing that seems to be part of Jaime’s very nature? It just faded away until just muttered words of apology, of dancing around each other by dancing around the machines, remained of it all.

_Though maybe, it should have been about just that all along, just about us…_

“And do you think that she was only talking about the machines, looking at her now?” the ghost wearing his mother’s face asks, nodding at Brienne as she keeps nursing her beer, ignoring whatever show they would normally have watched flickering across the screen above the bar, through which they once followed each and every game with excitement that had them both on the edge of their seats.

Jaime motions closer to stand right next to her, hoping for only just a moment that she can see him, feel his presence, but she just sits there, likely listening to the music playing, all the while scribbling in the small notebook Brienne carries around with her. He cranes his neck to take a look at it. At this point of time, Jaime is no longer as surprised as he would have been just a few hours back to see pages filled with tiny print, to the point that you have to lean in really close to just decipher it. The pages are filled with numbers, figures, calculations, small sketches, crossed out words, while others were underlined, circled, and then crossed out again.

Jaime can’t help but flash a grin for a moment, because he was always quite fascinated by how the woman could write almost as neatly as a typewriter, just much smaller. For Brienne, everything needed a certain order, and where there was none, she created it as stubbornly and as dutifully as she could.

It takes Jaime another moment to have his grin falling completely once he recognizes some of the tiny sketches, or rather, what they represent: The vat the company took away before Brienne had the opportunity to inspect it, the machine that has kept her back for what seems far too long as well.

Even now she is trying to find the solution to what simply was a chain of unfortunate events. Even now, Brienne of Tarth can’t seem to give up, unwilling to accept defeat.

And Jaime grows increasingly aware that he could have been aware of that, had he not been as caught up in his own issues as he has been, had done the math on a woman who he, up to date, could never quite decipher, but learned to read some of her fine print of, no matter how tiny on the page.

Jaime means to ask the Ghost of Christmas Present something, but the words catch in his throat as he sees Brienne putting her pencil down to pick it up with her left, whereas she holds her right hand in front of her eyes, twists and turns her wrist over and over, just like he did it with his stump back when Present picked him up for a journey around this time of the evening.

Brienne tries to scribble a word with her left hand, but it’s no longer neatly written, the letters are edgy, distorted, messing up the otherwise neatly aligned words and figures, messing up the order Brienne seeks so desperately most of her time.

Jaime tries to capture a glimpse of what the blonde woman wrote on the bottom of the page using her left, but that is when Brienne closes the book with a snap, leaving her right hand on top of it, holding on to the edge of the notebook so tightly that her knuckles turn white.

It is only then that Jaime recognizes this very notebook. He has seen it before, many times, actually, but it always went without his notice as he made his way across the platform, back to his office where he felt safe with his own misery wearing him down. Brienne carried it around ever since some time after the accident. Jaime can no longer pinpoint the date, but at some point, this dark red notebook grew to be a part of Brienne, always resting in one of the pockets of her overall.

 _We have much more in common than is good for either one of us_ , Jaime thinks to himself, his eyes still transfixed on the notebook tightly clutched by Brienne. _I write my reports whereas she tries to find a solution to a problem long since part of the past._

The machine’s malfunction is really just the outlet for the pressure Brienne feels on the inside all the while, or so it seems. While Jaime put all of his thoughts into the loss of his hand, about somehow containing the pressure he felt building up on the inside and was afraid of unleashing in front of the likes of Tyrion and Brienne, she chose to focus almost all of her efforts on the machine.

She blames herself like he blames himself.

Brienne probably still thinks that she is the cause for his hand being lost, though it couldn’t be further from the truth.

Which leaves the sickening conclusion that even now, he is the one who keeps her from moving on with life.

“And yet again something I royally screwed up,” he sighs, letting his head sink low as he steps away from Brienne slowly, suddenly feeling as though that is no longer his place to occupy. “I always mess up.”

That is the one constant of his life, or so it appears. Aerys seemingly had the rights of it in that regard. All of it is his fault, believing that _this_ worked, that _that_ worked, but nothing is working. Everything is falling to pieces, like the vat that almost exploded, if not for Brienne’s bravery and fast thinking at the very last second, even if that action came with sacrifice for them both. Jaime just keeps messing up, he just keeps dragging people down along with him.

_I probably deserve those chains like no other…_

The ghost wearing his mother’s face touches his shoulder, then, offering a gentle smile that reminds him far too much of Joanna to bear it right at this moment. “And it is these thoughts that make you stumble and fall each time, even now.”

“What? If I was taught that one thing by now, then it is that if you mess up, you mess up. There’s no way of fixing that,” he argues, gesturing at his stump, fury getting the better of him, all the frustration and sadness flowing in and out of that useless limb right onto the tip of his tongue. “There is no way to bring back the good times, there is no way of undoing the bad times. That is what Past showed me clear as day, whether I wanted to or not.”

The ghost looks at him now almost sadly, withdrawing her hand, which is like a feather’s touch at best, from him.

Jaime nods his head in Brienne’s direction, the anger still boiling his blood, the sheer amount of guilt he feels right at this moment almost unbearable. “And there is no way to repair the damage done to her either! I can’t undo the past. And my past has affected me for so long that it seems to be that even the present is no longer my time to shine! I am not like the girl-ghost who was here before you came along, going back in time however I please. I can only hijack my own memories and see everything I ever tried going up in flames!”

“So long you try to fix things in the past, you will never succeed, or look at the past and think about how it’s unchangeable. The world keeps changing as we speak,” the ghost says, snapping her fingers to take them out of the pub, back in the snow outside the building. “There is a present to expand the past upon. The present you can change, to change the future, to move closer to the hill to see what’s beyond it. Your remorse won’t ever change the past, present, or future, however. That is the one truth that I know.”

“Well, but _this_ I can no longer affect, can I? This is happening right as we speak, is it not? It’s all too late. It’s always too late, if only by a few seconds,” Jaime snaps, with tears in his eyes. “I am always too late. But that? You didn’t have to show me. I came too damn late to mend things with my brother. I came too late to ask Brienne out on a date before we both ended up in our own vicious cycles. I came too late to fix the damage done, and now my brother is miserable because he thinks I don’t care and Brienne? She is better off without this depressed cripple who is blind to the evidence right in plain sight! Whatever it is that you are trying to present to me as the way out? It’s not for me. Because I am stuck, I am stuck and I can’t move on! How do I fix that, you tell me! How do I fix that which has been broken for years?!”

His eyes are burning, his skin feels as though Aerys’s green ghost flames were licking at him again. While Jaime’s plan was to simply accept his fate of being chained up next to Aerys, it all seems to have disappeared ever since the Ghost of Christmas Present decided to give him just one more stab to the side, if only just to show him how much he screws up, now past or present.

Just why can’t this cruel trial come to an end?

_Just why don’t they let me disappear, if only to end this misery?_

“Great that you show me things that I can no longer change, only to remind me that I can’t change _anything_ about my condition, my situation, her situation,” Jaime goes on, not knowing where to put his anger anymore, already having lost the locks that kept those emotions deep down inside him so they wouldn’t come back up. “I know that your league is the present, but what of the future? There is no way of fixing that for the future, no way of looking _beyond the damned hill_! Tyrion will stay miserable because I treated him badly once morning rises, if not worse. Brienne is going to continue to be miserable because I snapped at her tonight though I wasn’t even angry with her. Whatever future I try to build? It shatters even before I get a shot at fixing it!”

He looks at the ghost before him, her expression that of his mother, but then again not, because this isn’t his mother. She is a ghost, if that is what those visitors are indeed, and frankly, she told him from the beginning that her time is the present, that his past, however fascinating for her to dive into however much she can through the present, is only ever just a stone in the river.

“Everything just keeps breaking to pieces and nothing remains of it because… I don’t know why. Maybe the Seven just hate me. Maybe this is all punishment for Aerys, I don’t know. I don’t even care. I just know that… you keep telling me that I am wrong, and I agree that I am, but you only show me things I can’t change anyway. So where is the point?”

_Why do you ghosts keep torturing me instead of just ending it? I rather go down fighting than just being reminded of how that fight is long since lost._

“You will see once it’s time, Jaime,” she tells him, her voice still as soft as the brush of a freshly fallen snowflake against one’s face.

“ _When_ is the time if not now? Aren’t you the bloody Ghost of Christmas Present? Isn’t _now_ your time?! What is all the waiting for when you keep telling me that I have waited too long already?! What of your speech? What of how we can only change the present, towards a future?” Jaime snaps.

_What is the sense in all this? What is the lesson to be learned? Just end it – and be quick about it, Seven Hells!_

“The time will come soon enough, but that is not my part of the path to guide you through,” the ghost wearing his mother’s face says. “But for that, you have to be ready. For that, you have to see. And that is what I am here for, that is what the present is for. It’s about preparing the future, setting something into motion that the past set into stone, because even the hardest, heaviest stone can bring about a rock slip, if only just by the right impetus.”

“See _what_?” he asks, now almost begs. “What am I supposed to see that I haven’t seen already?!”

 _What is the lesson? Just tell me and leave me alone_! he wants to beg, but then doesn’t.

“That you can change something if only you finally did,” the ghost answers.

“How? _How_?” he shouts hoarsely.

_How do you find a way of changing things when you get proven again and again that you are apparently unable to do it even when it’s easy!_

The ghost shrugs at him, flashing a sympathetic sort of smile yet again. “I fear I can’t tell you that. It’s not my time.”

“Why not?” he curses, wants to scream it, shout it. “ _Why_?! Why all this? Why let me relive the highlights of the worst parts of my life? Even those that take place right as we speak! Only because I don't appreciate Christmas enough? If you want to show me how much of a horrible person I am, showing me the people I have hurt, and how I keep hurting them, you don’t have to bother! I am aware, alright? I know it, I know it to the point that it hurts! I know that I treat people like shit, whether I care about them or not, that I lash out when I really shouldn’t. Where is the point in all of this? How is that supposed to help them or me?”

“You will see,” is the only answer he gets, but Jaime is not satisfied by any means.

“Stop saying that!” he cries out.

Because Jaime doesn’t see, he only sees his failures preventing him from living the life he maybe could have had if only he had acted faster, had acted differently.

“I cannot walk the path for you, Jaime, because this is your present, not mine. I walk beside you, but never ahead of you. You have to walk this path yourself, no matter the stumbling blocks, no matter the obstacles laid out on the path. It’s your life to live, not mine. Because my condition remains that I live only just in those present moments, but never beyond them. I am there at every step, but I never leave footsteps in the dust, or in the freshly fallen snow. But you? You are the only one who can take that path to the very end. I can only… try to show you the way as far as I can look,” the woman says, now almost sounding like his mother indeed. “And it’s up to you to try to see beyond that.”

“Then show me the way! Show me or bring me home!” Jaime curses, not knowing where to keep his anger, his fury, his sadness, his pain, growing ever the more aware of how the chains will fit around his neck just perfectly once this night draws to a close.

The ghost grimaces at him sadly, and for a moment, light takes a hold of the woman wearing his mother’s face.

“Show me or bring me home,” he repeats, demands, begs, all at the same time.

The woman in white crosses over to him, leaving no single trace in the snow as she goes, before extending her sleeve to him. Jaime grabs the white fabric readily, not bothering to look at the flux of blue and white as he keeps being removed from time and space, only to arrive somewhere else – his own mansion, Jaime realizes once he opens his eyes again. Though to his surprise, he is not inside it, but outside to the front, by the street, which is now completely covered in white of the freshly fallen snow that keeps raining down from the sky rapidly.

 “What now? What else is there to see? Can’t this nightmare just end?” Jaime cries out in exasperation.

He just can’t take anymore. This is all too much. Way too much.

He just wants it to stop.

_Just stop, please, please, please._

“I need you to see one last thing before I go,” the ghost says, pointing at the road ahead. Jaime stares as suddenly there is Brienne again, standing on the other side of the road, shoulders hunched due to the cold, hugging her woolen coat close to her flat chest.

Jaime blinks to see past the fluffy, almost palm-sized snowflakes obstructing his vision, surprised to catch sight of something red and golden in the otherwise white and black scenery, which only gains color from the orange and yellow streetlights outlining the edges.  

Brienne, an almost golden glow framing her body, has a present in hand, wrapped in golden paper with a simple red bow on top that almost gleams like a ruby.

 “She has a present… for me?” Jaime asks, blinking.

Tyrion gave up on giving him presents after the loss of his hand because Jaime basically forbade him, telling they younger man all the while that the only present he’d want would be a new hand to replace the stump with, but “that is something you can hardly wrap in paper, huh? So just leave it for good, little brother.” Tyrion stuck to that eventually, and Jaime was glad for it.

And Brienne and he never exchanged presents to the occasion, even before the incident at the factory, when they were friendly enough to have a beer together after work, called each other by their first names, were familiar to the point that he was almost right there, asking her out, to make more of that which was just beginning to bloom between them. They never gave each other gifts, for Christmas or their respective birthdays alike.

 _Well, the clothes I had picked for her would have been a present, had I gotten the chance to give it to her, but it never came to that_ , Jaime thinks to himself, his eyes still transfixed on the dot red on the other side of the street, beaming at him like a precious gemstone.

Yet, there she stands, with a small box wrapped in gold with a red bow on top, seemingly trying to move forward where Jaime got too caught up staying in one place, unable to move on to the next.  

“It appears so,” the ghost confirms. “I tend to think that she had planned for that well in advance, but I would have to ask Past for more information on the matter. Because I am bound to my time as much as she is bound to hers.”

“… That is why Brienne asked if I was heading home,” Jaime concludes, blinking. She wanted to know if he is home. To be sure that he would get the present in due time.

Jaime feels his heart beat faster at that, and with it, a little more warmth spreading throughout him.

Maybe that is what the ghost wearing his mother’s face is trying to show him? That there is a chance now? If Brienne comes to his house right now to deliver the present, she will likely ring the bell, or at least knock on the door.

Jaime is quick on his feet, has always been, so if he hurries up once he awakes, he might have a chance to catch up to her before the wench can slip away from him. He can call out her name and maybe make her stay, apologize.

_And then, maybe…_

“I have to go now, I am afraid,” the ghost says, pulling Jaime out of his hopeful fantasies back to the one side of the street, whereas Brienne is on the other, still out of his reach.

Jaime looks at the ghost stunned, suddenly feeling bad. He shouldn’t have yelled at the ghost. It’s not getting him anywhere anyway. And it’s not like she is at fault for what he has done or rather failed to do over the years.

“Wait,” Jaime says. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. You don’t have to leave. Please.”

“I have to leave because the time is up,” she argues.

“I didn’t mean to be angry with you.”

The woman turns back around to him, placing one feather-light hand on either of his shoulders. “But it’s alright to be angry. You have a lot one can be angry about. The problem is if you are angry all the time. It’s alright so long you apologize, so long you let it go after some time. You have a right to be angry about those things, to be frustrated, to feel sad, right at this moment, even though it’s a pain you feel echoing from the past. And you should allow yourself to feel those things, because they are a part of you as much as your happiness is, because they, too, define who you are right at this moment. You shouldn’t forget yourself, including past and present you, and past and present _them_ ,” she says, but then leans closer to the side of his face to whisper into his ear, “Remember this: you can save her.”

Jaime opens his mouth to say something, but the ghost has vanished by the time he can even open his mouth.

Gone, just like that.

_Like Mother…_

Jaime glances back at the street where Brienne is waiting for a chance to cross the road. He watches the cars rushing by on the slippery path, but the longer he watches, the more distorted they become, until they are no more than colorful stripes cutting across the street in the most tantalizing patterns, to the point that Jaime loses sight of Brienne standing on the other side, the only evidence of her still being there being a stripe of red floating across the other stripes of light.

And that is when the light keeps expanding, rushing towards Jaime as he stands there by the sidewalk, trying to be somewhat hopeful about a present that may not be entirely lost, and even if it isn’t… perhaps what the visitations are going to achieve is that he will move on to his spot next to Aerys and the chains somewhat at peace, so that, maybe, just maybe, Tyrion and Brienne can find their peace as well, move on from him, from all of this, toward the ominous hill and whatever lies beyond it.

He opens his arms as the light engulfs him and takes him far, far away, right back to the time that is the now.


	5. The Ghost of No Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime makes the acquaintance of the last ghost to visit him that night, but that fellow may prove to shock him regardless of Jaime's acceptance of his fate, which he believes him past this night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Thanks for sticking around, for commenting and kudoing.
> 
> I hope you are going to enjoy this... angsty chapter. Very angsty. *shudders*
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Jaime wakes up in his armchair, curled up on the furniture in a position that he knows is going to give him back pains in the morning, though he doesn’t find it in himself to care much about it, considering that tonight may be the night that all of that pain ends, whether he wants to or not.

He looks around, dazed for a moment, but then remembers Brienne on the other side of the road, with the golden present and the red bow on top, so he rushes to his feet, staggering two times before he makes it to the window, coming threateningly close to hitting his head against the window.

Jaime rubs his sleeve over the fogged window, squints his eyes, trying to spot the red bow that almost seemed to light up the entire street back when he was the with the Ghost of Christmas Present, but to his great surprise and disappointment, Brienne is not there, and that even though the Ghost of Christmas Present should have taken him… _well, to the present_!

Did he simply dream that? Is all of this only just a dream from which he just awoke? Aerys, the shapeshifting girl who has a name for her sword but not herself? The woman in white bearing his mother’s face, having no past of her own but only that of others? Tyrion and his girlfriend? Brienne?

Was all of it just an alcohol-induced fantasy?

This makes no sense at all, the more he thinks about it. None of it makes sense.

And the last ghost said he could save her before she went.

_But who? And from what?_

Jaime sighs once he walks back over to the armchair, sitting down on it with a thud, suddenly feeling exhausted, as though someone had attached lead to his limbs. That flash of hope he felt surging within him when outside with the ghost somehow completely vanished once he realized that Brienne is not there.

Because for a moment, he caught himself hoping for a different outcome, that maybe, against the odds of him always having lousy timing, always screwing up, he would get lucky insofar Brienne may be the one to make the step forward he needs to be taken to be set into motion alongside her.

 _However, that seems over anyway_ , Jaime thinks to himself solemnly. _And if the ghosts are real after all, then this may just as well have proven to me that there is no escape from this. Who can say? Maybe Present just meant to tell me that there is a way for Brienne out of the misery if only I am gone at last?_

He tries to console himself with the thought that after the next hour strikes, this ordeal will end, for better or worse, but alas, it will be over, it will come to an end, there will no longer be any questions, but just answers, facts. While Jaime doesn’t yet know what to make of all this, he wants it to end. Of that much he is certain without a doubt. He wants morning to rise, he wants Christmas to be over, simply over.

He wants the pain to end.

He wants the lingering between the times to come to an end.

And he wants the fear of the unknown future to stop as well, even if that means that his future is simply about to end, winding up in chains next to Aerys.

The time is passing by as quickly as last time while Jaime berates himself whether to call someone. If this is his last night, as Aerys’s ghost promised, then maybe he should use the moment? Make some last arrangements? Try to right some of the many wrongs he committed throughout the years?

_But what do you say on the phone in such a situation? Hey, my house is haunted, and Merry Christmas to you and the family. How is the turkey? And do you come to know any mediums who do exorcisms on the holidays?_

And who would he call anyway at that hour, or rather, who in his or her right mind would answer? To him of all people? And even if he were to call Tyrion or, Gods forbid, Brienne, what would he say in all earnest? Would he tell them that maybe he is going to wind up dead tonight? Talk about the merits and disadvantages of the afterlife with Aerys as his chaperone?

Jaime was never profound at saying goodbye. He couldn’t tell his mother goodbye before she passed away. He could never make his peace with the hand he lost in the accident. And while it may seem strange to most that he would have wanted to somehow say goodbye that limb, that is what it for him. Jaime simply woke up in pain, and without his right hand attached. There was absence where there once was the presence of something he thought he could take for granted.

However, if life taught him one lesson painful detail, as this night proved again, then it is that you can’t take anything for granted.

The only thing that seems for granted is that they all die in the end, some sooner, some later, but that, in the end, they are all reaching that spot down the road. And perhaps that is what the Ghost of Christmas Present just didn’t know was what awaited him behind the hill she kept talking about? After all, the future is not her league.

Jaime finds a strange sort of reassurance in the thought that it might be over tonight, because that means the limbo will come to an end, the constant going back and forth between wanting to shout out to the people he cares about while at the same time pushing them away, the constant back and forth between wanting to curse Brienne’s stubbornness for not letting go of the damned machine while at the same time wanting nothing but pulling her in for a kiss for not giving up, for just that stubbornness that drives him crazy.

And so, Jaime sits up straight in the armchair, lets out a calm, steady breath, and watches the seconds and minutes on the clock pass by, waiting for what seems to be the inevitable Past and Present meant to prepare him for.

And if that is the end of the trial, then Jaime is done fighting it. He will accept his fate and walk past the hill, no matter to where it may take him.

At last, the clock strikes at the next full hour.

The final hour, perhaps.

_Or perhaps very likely so._

Jaime looks around once the sound of the clock has rung out, the echoes retreating into the dark corners hiding in the shadows. He tries to spot the last visitor of the supernatural kind, but that fellow seems to be late as the Past proved to be.

_Apparently, even my future has bad timing, or so it seems._

Jaime gasps when a figure emerges from the shadows all of a sudden, as though the creature was born out of the darkness, tearing itself out of the shadows, taking them with it until they take shape and fall down the length of the figure emerging, forming a ragged cloak that flickers around as though air constantly blew through them. Jaime cannot make out a face, let alone a person underneath the shadow cloak. Like Present, this ghost remains hidden, just that this visitor seems to prefer the darkness over the light Present reserved for herself.

Somehow, the ghost reminds Jaime of the illustrations of the Stranger in the _Seven-Pointed Star_ that he had to read as a kid, the child-appropriate version with a couple of more illustrations and some of the stories simplified and some of the violence removed to make them fit for a younger audience, so not to have the poor children hide under their beds, afraid of their own Gods.

However, the Stranger always struck him as a sinister fellow, even in the colorful illustrations in his children’s prayer book, someone who brought with him death, the end, the absolute. And the ghost coming up to him, moving as though he never touched the ground, as though he had no feet to walk with, looks perhaps even more somber than the Stranger in his children’s books ever proved to be.

“So, you are the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, I assume,” Jaime says, trying his best to keep a straight face, not wanting to let the thing know that he is indeed a bit scared by its appearance.

 _Never show weakness to your opponents_ , as his father would probably say. _Never admit weakness, even if you have it. Find a way to hide it and make a sword from it._  

While Jaime is ready for what may be beyond the hill, he doesn’t want to just succumb. He will cross that path with head held high. That seems to be the last thing he has to offer, the last thing he can reserve for himself. That bit of pride that even years of sadness and depression did not wash away, for better or worse.

However, the ghost has apparently no intention to reply to him, just stands there silently in the dimly lit room, the cloak the only thing that keeps moving around him, looking almost like black feathers now.

“You don’t seem very talkative, huh?” Jaime huffs, not as surprised at the lack of reaction from the fellow this time. “My father has an employee you would probably get along with greatly. Ilyn Payne. He no longer has a tongue, so I bet you would get along. In case you are interested.”

And yet again, no answer. Jaime sighs. This is may be even worse than the cheeky girl ghost who came to him after Aerys, and Jaime thought that she was annoying enough already.

“Great,” he scoffs. “Well, at least that means you won’t badmouth me the way the first one has done. I suppose that is a good thing.”

The lack of an answer doesn’t surprise Jaime, but it doesn’t fail to irritate him regardless of the fact.

“So, with all due respect, your _Christmas-y Excellency_ , if you wish to show me my future and how I will end up dead all lonely… I am not afraid of that, and there is no reason of showing me. I am not afraid of my own death,” Jaime declares as boldly as he can, because on that matter, he is speaking the truth. “So… if that is what you are up to, we might just as well move on and get going. I am ready.”

Jaime readily would have died for Brienne in the factory back then, if it had come to that. Dying to protect someone? That is a death Jaime considers one that bears on meaning, one of importance, one that is worth giving one’s own life for. And even if he is meant to die all alone, not having saved anyone, it won’t make a difference to him. Death comes to them all, Jaime long since came to accept that, and whether he is in this world or not?

It makes no difference in the long run.

_Actually, I think some people might be best off without me to drag them down…_

“So, if that is the means you think you need to teach me a lesson, you may want to reconsider. It’s a lesson I already learned or, at the very least, already learned to embrace, so you can save yourself the time and effort, fella,” Jaime warns him, to which the ghost says nothing, though, but only ever extends his hand, which, much like the ghost’s cloak, reminds Jaime of tiny beard’s feathers, with dark claws instead of fingertips, looking like a strange mixture of a human hand and a bird’s talon, though Jaime long since stopped questioning the sorcery of those kinds of things. He saw a shapeshifting girl-ghost, and a ghost who could walk without leaving footprints, whose face was light, and then his mother’s face. He saw Aerys, by the Seven, controlling ghost chains and wildfire. So why not a man who has semblance with a bird?

Jaime watches as the ghost’s hand twists in the shadows until a scythe forms out of the darkness, turning solid in his grasp, which he then holds out to Jaime. Reluctantly, Jaime takes a hold of the black scythe, finding himself in the familiar flux again, but this time, there is no blue, no white colors, just black particles all around him.

Jaime closes his eyes, then, not seeing a reason why he should bother seeing all of the darkness he feels inside him already, only to open his eyes to some road in the city. It’s winter time, he can tell, likely Christmas, judging by the decoration on some of the houses on the other side of the road, and from the way people dress, it’s sometime in the more distant future, because the styles don’t look familiar to him at all.

“I don’t know this place,” he says, looking around, hoping for some sort of input from the Stranger-lookalike, but no such luck, which he knows should no longer surprise him, but it just makes this whole endeavor more work than Jaime wants it to be, considering that he is ready, if only the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come would finally do the duty and swing his scythe at him, _if that is what he is meant to do_.

Jaime watches as people pass them by, and it is only once he hears someone say that this is where “Old Mr. Lannister’s company” used to be that this is in fact the street where he once had his factory, but all signs of it are removed, as though it was never there, when in fact, this was the place that changed so many things for him throughout his life. There is an office building now instead, Jaime notes, no trace of his factory having remained.

It vanished, completely vanished.

And apparently, he went away along with it, fading into a faint whisper.

“Well, times change, I suppose,” Jaime says, chewing on his lower lip. “Going out of business is not the almost bad. Happens all the time.”

It’s little surprise that there is no reaction from the cloaked fellow beside him, which doesn’t stop Jaime from talking anyway. He spent his first few weeks working with Brienne just like that – always talking to her while she just treated him with silence, if only just to provoke her to talk to him, to interact with him, even if he had to call her “wench” a hundred times to have her scowl at him.

And if Brienne of Tarth didn’t manage to beat him with her silence, that fellow won’t beat him to the game either.

Because Brienne of Tarth is the most stubborn person he has ever met, and Jaime remains confident that she will remain just that. Or even if not, that is how he would like to remember her, considering that this may have been the last time he saw, back on the other side of the street with the present in hand he may never learn the content of.

More and more people pass them by, and Jaime hears again and again how they whisper about “Old Mr. Lannister,” a man who turned bitter and “cold as ice,” which leaves small wonder why he lost “all that he held dear.” Some say it served him right. Others call him names, Kingslayer most prominently, but none of that wavers Jaime in the least. He walked the streets being called the Kingslayer for as long as he can remember after he killed Aerys. That is merely a cut. The rest? The people he failed? The things that most other people wouldn’t ever know have been going on in his life, have made him the man he is? That is what is tearing him apart, but people’s whispering behind his back? It’s just a small sting by comparison.

What strikes him as odd is that he repeatedly hears his name in connection to “death” and “having passed,” though Jaime reckons that the fellow whose mood can only be described as very dark means to show him his own mortality to make him scared of it.

_But no such luck, not with Jaime Lannister, no. I am ready. Your friends made me. So here I am, ready to await judgment. Why bother prolonging the moment of truth?_

“You know, I _did_ mean what I said: I am not scared of death, have never been. I reckoned a long time ago that I would die rather sooner than later. I have no fantasies of growing old and wrinkly. So if you mean to teach me a valuable lesson, that may be the wrong one,” he points out to the ghost, not bothering to care whether that makes the fellow furious or not.

Jaime is past the point to care. If that is the ghost who is meant to put him in chains for his past, which seem to be past forgiveness, then that is so.

He is done running, and he is done pretending. If the ghosts meant to show him that all he did was wrong, then he agrees, and he is ready to take on the punishment they have chosen for him, thus, even if it means spending eternity with the man whose death he does not and will not feel sorry for, no matter his regret, no matter his blame.

If disappearing, if dying, is the solution to at least Tyrion’s and Brienne’s problems, then Jaime will accept that fate rather than remaining in the limbo that keeps the three of them caught up in themselves, allowing for no way out.

_Maybe that is the one step forward I still have to take. So why do you keep me from it by trying to make me hesitate?_

He already means to say something else, but that is when the scythe hovers right in front of his face. Jaime takes a step back, blinking.

“You could at least give me a warning, you know?” Jaime pouts. “Seven Hells, I thought that at least the mute ones would show some manners. I don’t expect them from the cheeky girl ghosts, but from _you_? I thought you were a bit more sophisticated than that.”

The ghost just holds the scythe up anyway, the shadow-rags floating upwards, reminding Jaime yet again of feathers that almost brush against his face. Jaime lets out a sigh as he grabs the thing, right back in the flux of black particles, only to open his eyes in another place, though seemingly the same time.

“A graveyard. Classic,” he comments, glancing up at the dark sky. “And it’s raining on tops, how fitting! I think that should give you an A+ on setting and scenery. Really atmospheric.”

Naturally, Jaime’s words are lost on the ghost, who just stands there, watching him having a monolog with himself. Jaime blows out air through his nostrils.

_I am having a verbal fight with a ghost who won’t even reply to me._

“And now you will show me my grave and I will have to realize how precious time is and how I let it pass by, because I was so caught up with my own problems… but again, I already know all of that, thanks to your previous ghostly speakers. So why do you bother? You might just as well take me back and call it a day… or night. You seem to enjoy that time more,” Jaime goes on. “Judging by your way of clothing.”

The ghost walks on, or rather _floats_ on, unimpressed, and Jaime is bound to follow, all the while silently cursing to himself.

 _At least the fellow can’t say I didn’t tell him so, right_? Jaime thinks to himself as he walks past rows of tombstones, covered in moss, some decorated with flowers, others empty, abandoned either because those to tend to it are long since gone, too, or the people meant to take care of the grave have long since forgotten about the deed, and the person buried beneath the earth.

Jaime can’t wrap his head around this. He understood the purpose of Aerys, the girl ghost, and the woman in white, but this one? That Stranger-lookalike makes no sense to him whatsoever, his lesson makes no sense to him. Jaime _knows_ that he is mortal. He knows he is not invincible. He learned that lesson with all of its pain when his hand got twisted to the point of no return by the valve – and there was nothing but pain. Because invincible people feel no pain. And Jaime heard it from the doctors later on as well, that it was a close call. That his heart gave up a few times while on the operating table. That his life was hanging by a thread after the surgery and that no one knew whether he would recover.

Jaime knows that he is here on earth just on probation.

_And as it appears, my probation ran out because I didn’t stick to the rules. And now it’s long since too late to plead innocent. I am not innocent. I made too many mistakes to make that call. So just give me my sentence and swing the hammer already!_

Further and further down the rows they go, down the almost white shining paths cutting across the green until Jaime spots an old man with a cane hobbling down the same path as they. It takes Jaime a few moments to register that the old man with silver-shining hair, dressed in a dark red coat is missing his right hand.

“Is that me?” Jaime asks, blinking.

The cloaked ghost stops in his tracks to look back at Jaime, though he can’t make out the man’s face in the darkness of his hood, and yet, the Stranger-seeming ghost gives a small, slow nod of his head.

“That’s me,” Jaime mutters, watching himself as an old man, hobbling down the paths of the graveyard in the middle of the night, making small steps, so not to slip on the puddles that built thanks to the heavy rain.

He can’t quite believe what he sees. Jaime always thought he would die young. Since an early age, he was somehow convinced that he wouldn’t live long enough to see himself grow old, let alone die of old age. After what happened in the factory, Jaime felt like life was very limited in its time, and he came to believe that his days are even more tightly counted than that of most others.

He accepted that, he never questioned it. Jaime just took it as it was – the continuation of the chain of unfortunate events that constituted his life for so very long.  

And yet, here he is, old, wrinkly, leaning on a cane with a lion as a handle as though it was the only thing keeping upright in this world.

Perhaps he was wrong about the lesson the ghost tried to teach him? Perhaps it’s about the life he still has ahead of him? Is that it?

_But that seems far too hopeful for such a gloomy setting…_

“Where am I going?” Jaime asks as they walk after the old man who is apparently Jaime, too.

The ghost says nothing, _of course_.

“I have to stop asking you contention questions, huh?” Jaime sighs, but then focuses his attention back on the older version of himself.

The old man keeps walking a while longer until he takes one of the smaller ways running perpendicular to the other main road of white pebbles mixed, which shine wetly due to the rain. He stops at one of the headstones to the far right. Jaime can see the tremor in his older self’s body as he holds on tight to the cane with both hands.

“It’s not… it’s not one of my family, is it?” Jaime asks, the air catching in his throat at the thought, fear clutching at his heart, clutching cold, so very cold.

_Is that it? Is he trying to show me how my family is dead? Talk about cruel._

The ghost shakes his head at him wordlessly, pointing his dark scythe at the older version of himself. Jaime turns as he sees the old man go down on one knee in front of the headstone, even though it seems to put him in great pain.  

“And here I am again…,” the old Jaime laughs hoarsely, looking at the tombstone in front of him. “I always want to stay away that day, you know? I hated Christmas for so very long… but now I seem to have the one reason to do so. But in the end… I can’t stay away, no matter how much I want to. You always bring me here, you see? I don’t know how you do it, I just know that you do. And it seems that when you died you took all Christmas snow with you… it always rains when I come to see you now.”

He looks up into the sky, big droplets of rain falling on his wrinkly forehead, running down his blotchy skin like tears. The old man looks back at the gravestone, then, licking his lips.

“But the thing is… here I stand now, well, _kneel_ now because my legs give up on me way too often these days. I am here, old and broken and weak… and I wished, I truly wished that finally death would take me away, so that… by some faint chance, we could meet again, so that I could apologize to you at last, but instead… I linger in this life for what seems to be forever. And I am one spending eternity being unable to apologize, unable to see you again,” he says as his other knee gives way underneath him. “You’d have no idea just how much I would give to see you one more time.”

Mud soaks his beige trousers, but the old Jaime doesn’t seem to care as he keeps his eyes fixed on the tombstone in front of him, which young Jaime cannot read the engraving of as it is cast in the shadows of the night.

“What happened here?” Jaime asks the ghost, who says nothing again, not even a simple gesture for a reply other than pointing back at the old Jaime by the headstone.

The air catches in his throat. He prides himself not being afraid of much of anything, but right now Jaime can feel it, right down to his bones – he is afraid, afraid of the name on that tombstone, because looking at the older version of himself, that name must bear all of world’s pain for him, where it once bore the entire world, only to see it shattered.

Cold clutches at Jaime as he steps closer, taking his position behind his older self. He squints his eyes against the rain, trying to make out the letters, the name, but he can’t see it in the dark.

 _Just what is this mad lessons supposed to be all about_? Jaime asks himself, already meaning to ask the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come another time, but that is when suddenly, thunder rolls and rumbles across the sky, almost shaking the earth. The clouds seem to crack open like an egg once as white light erupts, illuminating all of the graveyard, painting it as white as freshly fallen snow.

Jaime feels like choking as, at last, the letters become visible.

And he wished he had never seen.

_No, no, no, no, no…_

“I am so sorry, Brienne,” the older version of himself says.

It's her name on that tombstone.

It’s her.

It’s Brienne.

Brienne is dead.

_No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!_

Jaime staggers backwards, stumbles, falls on his back, gets back up again, and hurries over to the ghost, standing there as calmly as ever, as though none of this mattered, when in fact, that is the one thing that matters.

_She is… was._

“That’s, that’s not possible! Not at all possible! You listen to me! She was fine. Maybe a bit miserable. But healthy. She was always healthy, as healthy as an ox. The doctor could take off her cast one week earlier after the accident because she was healing up so fast. That can’t be. That simply cannot be! It’s impossible! Impossible! Brienne is younger than me. She can’t die before me. She can’t have…,” Jaime rambles, his eyes, wide, but then he snaps his head around to the ghost. “She can’t leave me…”

“How? What happened?” Jaime demands, feeling out of breath.

He has to know, has to, has to, _has_ to.

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come points ahead once more in reply. Jaime whirls his head back around to the tombstone. He looks at the thing his old self laid upon the tombstone – it’s the same red bow that was around the present Brienne had in hand, to deliver to his door when he stood outside it with the Ghost of Christmas Present.

“She died on Christmas… she died this Christmas, didn’t she?” Jaime whispers as it dawns on him. “She dies this Christmas. Tonight, she…”

He looks back at the ghost who gives no single sign, and yet, thereby confirming it all, even in the silence – and that silence is even worse than the one he bore witness to after he killed Aerys.

Thunder rolls past his head louder than any bell could ever bring, cutting through the silence with a sharp, white blade as the lightning follows.

Jaime, not knowing what else to do, just grabs the ghost by the collar, gritting his teeth, tears standing in his eyes. “Take me back! Take me to that time! Take me now! Quick! Take me! Present said I could save her! Take me to her! Take me to her now!”

The ghost touches his scythe against Jaime, and they are swallowed by the flux again, filled with dark particles and even darker thoughts, the darkest future Jaime dared believe possible.

Jaime opens his eyes to the mansion once more, in the near future, looking down on his sleeping form, curled up in the armchair. In a hurry, Jaime staggers over to the window, and there Brienne is, alive, on the other side of the road.

_Thank the Seven. Thank the Seven. Thank you. Thank you. It’s not too late. I am not too late. Not yet. Not yet!_

“Brienne,” he whispers as she crosses the road. She momentarily disappears from his view as she climbs the staircase leading up to the front porch and the entrance door, but he knows she is there because that is when his doorbell rings throughout the entire house.

Jaime turns around, expecting his sleeping self to get up any second now to answer the door, but he remains still, snoring softly.

“No, no, no, I have to wake up!” Jaime rambles, running over to his sleeping self in the armchair. He leans right over his own ear and starts to scream at the top of his lungs, “Wake up! WAKE UP! GET THE DOOR! TAKE HER INSIDE! WAKE UP! TAKE HER INSIDE, GET HER SOMETHING TO DRINK! MAKE HER STAY! DON’T LET HER GO! BUT WAKE UP! WAKE UP NOW! SAVE HER! SAVE HER _NOW_!”

_If you don’t move now, there is no tomorrow, no world beyond the hill, so get up, get up and open the door!_

But Jaime doesn’t wake up, fast asleep, likely knocked out from the booze for good this time.

Jaime can hear the doorbell ring two more times, but then the noises die out, the echo fading fast, and the house returns to its sinister silence. He jumps back to the window to see Brienne walking away without the present in hand anymore. Not knowing what else to do, and sure that he won’t get any support from the dark fellow looming in the shadows again, Jaime rushes down the stairs and over to the door.

He tries to grab the door knob and turn it, but his hands go right through it. Jaime blinks, but then thinks better of it and simply walks through it like the others walked through him earlier that night. He has no time to lose.

Now is the only time. Now is the only future.

And in fact, he passes right through the wood of the door, only to come out on the outside. Jaime looks down himself, but wastes not much of a thought on it as his eyes catch a glimpse of glistening red to his left.

The golden present with the red bow lies to his feet, set up on the doormat, so that it doesn’t get wet due to the snow, likely for him to find in the morning.

In a frenzy, Jaime rushes ahead, to where Brienne is, to where she is walking away, to a future he has to prevent from becoming present and past.

He tries to grab Brienne’s hand, but his palm goes right through her the same way he went through the door, touching nothing, losing everything out of its grip. Jaime curses, thinking about how he only ever held her hand consciously that one time back in the pub, squeezing it tight as the Kingsguard was about to make the final touchdown that guaranteed them victory and he just held on, passing it off as nervousness upon her questioning, relishing her faint blush as they let go again, which was the night that he decided to buy her the blue suit and ask her out on the next occasion. He thinks about how that actual touch may have prevented all this here, but now is not the time.

Past is not the time.

Present isn’t.

_She is the future and I have to save her!_

Jaime rushes ahead of her, then, positions himself right in front of Brienne, concentrates as much as he can to somehow bring about a change, tries to think of the things that made him hold on to life when he felt like letting go, thinks to her big blue eyes, to beers on the patio with Tyrion, to walking Brienne home after a game, putting out the lights in the factory before catching up to her with a smart comment that only ever had her roll her eyes at him, but Brienne passes right through him each time, taking no notice of his presence whatsoever.

Not knowing what else to do, Jaime simply goes on yelling, walking beside her as she makes her way to the front of the property, “BRIENNE! Please! Stop! Stay where you are!”

But nothing, simply nothing. She just walks on ahead, looking as sadly as ever, seemingly having thought that tonight would be the night to move forward, if only that stubborn cripple she apparently bore feelings for all the while without his notice would not be soundly asleep upstairs in the mist of booze and his own misery.

_Because of me. All is because of me. It’s my fault, my fault, mine…_

“Try again at the door, Brienne! Try again, please! I am drunk because I am a whiny asshole and have to stop the self-pity! You have to ring again! Knock! Yell! You have to snap me out of it! You have to ring again! And again! Until I open! Scream! Kick the door down if you want! Kick the living hell out of me! But stay! Stay! Don’t go! Brienne! BRIENNE!”

They walk past the wooden fence. Dutifully, Brienne closes the fence gate once she has gone through it, before proceeding towards the sidewalk to get to the other side of the road, likely to return home and call it another night of no movement, another Christmas lost, another chance wasted.  

Jaime already wants to shout again, but that is when she turns around once more, and for a moment, he hopes that Brienne heard him somehow, that she feels his presence at last, but she isn’t looking at him, Brienne is looking at the house behind them, where his actual self is busy sleeping through the most important moment of his life thus far.

The fact that Brienne has tears in her eyes as she turns back around makes Jaime feel cold throughout.

_This simply can’t be._

“Merry Christmas,” she mutters under her breath before turning her gaze back to the road, looking right and left, before she starts to cross the broad, slippery road.

Brienne can’t walk as past as she probably would like to because of the snow not having been removed from the road just yet, making it difficult even for a woman with legs that seem a mile long to move over the valleys and peaks the cars created. Jaime’s eyes remain fixed on her, fixed on the future currently walking away from him, but that is when there is a screeching sound to the left. When Jaime turns his head in the direction, he sees a car driving zig-zag, and at way too high speed. Behind the steering wheel, he can catch glimpse of a man a bit older than him, a bottle likely filled with booze in his hand.

By the time Jaime’s mind can even begin to comprehend, he looks back to Brienne as she rolls over the car that just hit her with a deafening bam. She lands on the back of the car, then in the muddy snow, rolls a few more times until her body comes to an abrupt halt in a heap of arms and legs, motionless, stuck in time.

Jaime waits for the man to get out of the car and get help, but the bastard just speeds up down the road again.  

“COME BACK, ASSHOLE! YOU OVERRAN HER! GET BACK! CALL HELP!” Jaime shrieks at the top of his voice, but the car disappears behind the next corner, out of his sight, and with it, out of his mind, because all Jaime cares for lies on the road ahead of him.

Jaime rushes over to Brienne’s still form in the snow and falls to his knees beside her, not feeling the cold of the snow biting into his flesh, because he isn’t there.

He is up there, sleeping.

He is up there, coming too late.

Again.

_Damn it._

Jaime wants to hold her, wants to touch her, but he can’t. Whenever Jaime reaches out, his hands travel right through her, leaving him with no chance to do what he should have done a million times, if only he had gathered the courage, if only he had moved instead of staying motionless. Because he is actually up there in his room, not down here on the road. He is a ghost, a projection of himself bound to bear witness to the one thing that means true terror for Jaime. He can’t change the past or future, let alone the present.

Jaime can’t change anything about this. She is dying and he can’t change it.

Brienne lets out a wet cough as she turns on her back, glancing up at the sky, snowflakes falling down on her, brushing past her pale skin as though they were feathers, painting her whiter and whiter with every second passing.

And for a moment there, leaning over her, Brienne’s eyes looking up, Jaime believes that she sees him after all.

“Brienne, stay with me. You must not die, you hear me!? You must live! Brienne, I will surely come right out. I will come out and I will get you help. We will get you to hospital and the doctors are going to get you all fixed again. You will get the best doctors and they are going to fix you. You will be alright. You _have_ to be alright. I risked my life for you before. And this is how you thank me? You must live! You must live so I can ask you out on a date, on ten, twenty, so many that we both lose count! But you have to live! Live!”

Brienne glances up, dazed, blood dripping out of her mouth, leaving small droplets on the white snow, shining even brighter than the red bow did when Present showed him just that road, filling him with hope that turned to ash right at this second.

_This can’t be happening, this can’t be the lesson to be learned, please!_

Jaime turns his head, startled when he sees the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come beside him once more, simply standing there, unmoving, unmoved.

“Help her!” Jaime demands, gritting his teeth.  

The cloaked ghost just shakes his head to signal him no.

“Please,” Jaime begs, but there is only another shake of the head from the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, a denial of any future Jaime could come to care about.

Jaime tears his gaze back to Brienne, then the house, hoping that he will wake up. He prays, yes, _prays_ that the door will open and that his drunken self will stumble outside, so that Brienne does not die alone, so that she does not die believing that he didn’t care, because he cares, cares so much that his heart can barely take it, could barely take it for those past three years they spent going through separate hells.

But Jaime doesn’t come outside. The door remains shut. No doorstopper in that one to prevent the story from going on, from the stone rolling down the hill into a valley of no return.

A chapter closed.

The ink long since dried on the page.

Jaime never wanted her to be lonely again, to sport that sad expression, and now Brienne is supposed to die all alone, just outside his door? Because of him? Because she wanted to give him some present? Where is the justice in that? What did she do to pay for his sins, his shortcomings, for him not being good enough, not being enough?

_Why, why why???_

Brienne will die alone, she will die afraid, because of him, because he isn’t there.

Jaime blinks up into the sky, mentally cursing the Gods for being that unfair, for being that cruel, for bringing that much injustice upon a person who was always honest, always an upstanding citizen out of the handbook.

_You could have simply taken me! That would have been fair! But why her?! Why her? Why? Why? Why?_

A snowflake lands right at the top of his head, not going through him, and for a moment there, he sees his mother’s face swim up before his eyes.

“You can save her.”

Jaime swallows, turning back to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. “Is it… is this the future that will inevitably come or is it what may be if I don’t change things? Tell me now!”

But there is no answer. Yet again, there are only more questions. No sweet ending, no slipping away to leave the others unharmed, there is just more chaos, more pain.

“Tell me please!” Jaime begs, tears in his eyes, but the ghost does not react.

Brienne coughs, calling Jaime’s attention back to her as she draws her last breaths.

“Brienne, please, stay with me. Stay with me. Brienne,” he pleads, but by that time, she is already gone, her last breath going up in a white cloud, climbing into the sky to mingle with the white snowflakes there.

She is dead.

Brienne is dead.

_And so am I… so much to Christmas Spirit, aye?_

He looks over to the ghost who looks like the Stranger another time, tears streaming down his face, mourning the future that seems inevitable, the future that awaits him beyond the hill.

It seems that the fellow achieved his goal after all, making him feel scared, just for his own death, but Brienne’s, proving to him all over that he always comes too late, that Jaime’s own regret prevents him from happiness, from doing the right thing at the right time, to be there when Brienne would have needed him most.

“You won,” Jaime whispers hoarsely.

If that is now the time that the shackles come and take him away, they should hurry it up, because Jaime is ready now.

There is no reason to keep pretending anymore. That is his ending as much as it is hers.

_Come and get me, come take me! Take me away and end this! But end it!_

To his surprise, the man then raises his scythe before him, his cloak sounding like a bird’s wing flapping before climbing into the air to fly away. Jaime reckons that he will strike him down any second now, but as the scythe comes down on him, it turns into black feathers, and from them a black bird climbs up into the sky.

A crow.

Jaime looks back at the Ghost of Christmas Yet to come, and for a moment, he believes to see a young man’s face with dark hair, looking a bit like Past, if not for the white eyes darting through the darkness, but the shadows consume him already, and the last thing Jaime hears is the crow’s shriek ringing out, ringing loud, high up in the sky as snow continues falling on the city, burying _her_ in a cloak of white, announcing the future yet to come, the future that is none. 


	6. The Ghosts Are Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime wakes up after the last visitation of the supernatural kind has left upon the strike of the clock, having to face the future now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Thanks for sticking around, for commenting and kudoing. You'd have no idea how happy that makes me. ♥
> 
> I feel ever the more relieved that you stick with me even though I gave you so much angst in the last chapter. 
> 
> I hope this one will *resolve* the mystery of what is going to happen next, and whether this mad fan-author typing this shredded away too much, to quite a different ending...
> 
> *cackles*
> 
> I hope you are going to enjoy. 
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Jaime wakes up, drenched in sweat, a scream dying on his lips. He gasps for air, his gaze frantically going about the room to detect the ghost with dark feathers for a cloak, but the Stranger-lookalike is long since gone, faded back into the shadows he came out of. Jaime’s heart is still racing, the images of snow tainted red still too fresh on his mind.

Jaime’s eyes linger by the window, realizing that it’s still dark outside, pitch black, except for the speckles of white from the snow that keeps on falling silently outside.

Suddenly, the bell rings, ripping him out of his thoughts.

And that leaves just one thought on his mind:

 _Brienne_.

That has to be Brienne.

_That means she isn’t…_

Jaime scrambles to his feet and staggers down the stairs, not caring for how many times he hits his knees on them. At last, the foot of the staircase comes into sight and Jaime simply jumps the rest of the way, not daring to waste any more time, just one more second. He darts for the front door, and this time, the knob turns in his hand instead of going right through him.

He tears the door open, almost bringing it out of its hinges. Jaime tries to spot her, though the palm-sized snowflakes make it hard for him to see much of anything except for faint outlines of where the streetlights cast light on what lies in the dark otherwise.

At last, he catches sight of the familiar thatch of blonde hair, but Brienne is already past the gate, already shut it with a thud.

Fear clutches at Jaime, his mind racing back over to what happened in the future that is seemingly not yet written into stone the same way past is. No, he can’t let that become his future.

_Never._

“BRIENNE!” Jaime shouts at the top of his voice – and this time, she turns around, looking at him in utter shock, her big blue eyes darting through the dark like two small beacons.

“Stay right where you are!” he calls out, demands.

_Because she has to stay. I have to make her stay. I can’t have her go, not now. Not ever again._

Brienne looks at him in utter confusion, likely believing him insane, but Jaime couldn’t care less as he runs up to her, sliding over ice and snow, not even feeling the cold biting into the soles of his bare feet.

“Stay, please!” Jaime keeps calling out to Brienne, who is standing by the edge of the sidewalk, meaning to cross the road. When he catches up to her at last, Jaime simply grabs Brienne by the gloved wrist and pulls her away from the edge of the sidewalk, almost against his chest, though she coils back at the last second, her reflexes as sharp as ever.

For a moment, the whole world seems to stop, safe for the snowflakes slowly sinking to the ground, dancing in the air as though the whole world was waiting for them to finish their part, leaving two people standing by the sidewalk, one holding on to the other by the wrist, breathing hard, as though it was his first breath to take in years, as though that connection right there, where glove meets chilled skin is what keeps him upright.

Because it does.

“Jaime, what are you…,” Brienne means to ask, but that is when suddenly, a car whooshes past their backs, driving zig-zag round the next corner.

Jaime lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

_You can change the present. You can change the present. You can change the present once you know your past and future._

She told him. He can save her.

_And she was right. Thank the Seven she was right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you._

“Did you catch the license plate? That man was clearly intoxicated,” Brienne asks, her eyes still focused on the road ahead to where the car disappeared. And for a moment, Jaime doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh that Brienne acts as dutifully as ever, an upstanding citizen out of the handbook.

Because that leaves just one logical conclusion – she is alive to live just that honorable life.

“How irresponsible. He could hit someone like that,” she goes on, seemingly ignoring the fact that Jaime still holds on to her wrist for the moment.

“I’ll call the police in due time,” Jaime says automatically. The license plate is actually scourged into his mind ever since he saw the car driving away in the future now no longer future, wherein she died in his arms-not-his-arms.

 _But this is no future anymore_ , Jaime reminds himself, a faint smirk creeping up his lips _. This here is. This is present now, this is the future. Just like there are no alternative pasts, there are no alternative futures. This is future now._

“Your… feet are getting wet,” Brienne tells him, perplex, pointing at his bare feet once she focuses his attention back to Jaime.

“I couldn’t care less,” he laughs, still out of breath.

“What? What are you smiling at?” Brienne asks, wrinkling her nose, still trying to make sense of all this. One moment she is preparing herself for a long walk home to ponder just what she did wrong this year around, the next, Jaime is pulling her back from the street, standing there in just a thin shirt, jeans, not even wearing socks, flashing a smile she didn’t see on him ever since that last time during the game that brought the Kingsguard the Super Bowl Cup and they just embraced each other out of sheer excitement, pulling apart embarrassed, only for him to crack up laughing.

It is not the exact kind of smile, it’s somewhat different, with an edge of worry, nervousness, uncertainty, but nonetheless, it’s the kind of smile Brienne didn’t see on Jaime’s face ever since the accident at the factory.

“You,” he replies simply. “I am smiling at you.”

Because she is alive, because Jaime can feel the fabric of her woolen coat rubbing against his fingertips from where he still holds her by the wrist. Because Brienne is still there, not dead.

Because this is the present now, on the edge of becoming future.

Because he didn’t come too late.

“What?” Brienne asks, her lips curling into an even deeper frown. “You are not making any sense.”

“And I am not trying to.”

“Well, but that would be helpful for me to understand,” she argues with a grimace. “Jaime, are you quite alright?”

“I couldn’t be better.”

“Now you are making fun of me.”

There is no way that he feels at his best. The best times are over. He said so himself, and it’s evident to anyone who has a set of two eyes and has watched the man throughout the years. There are no better years to come after such an accident, after such a loss. Brienne is aware of that. All the time before the accident was what started to count the moment on Jaime awoke at the hospital and had to receive the news that they had to amputate his hand.

And Brienne herself found her life also going down the hill ever since the accident. Not only for the scar she looks at in her own reflection in the morning whenever she gets ready for work, standing in her bathroom, brushing her teeth, all the while crunching numbers that she knows she should let go of, if only she found the power for it. The best times? They began when she started working at Jaime’s factory and felt like Brienne finally found her spot in the world, earned the job she wanted to work, earned people’s respect, when she found someone to trust in, and that in a man people claimed to be someone without honor. Brienne’s best years were a mixture of doing her little dance with the machines, talking to Jaime, having beers with him in their favorite pub, watching the game, talking, simply talking, and being heard. Because Jaime was the first man she met who genuinely expressed interest in all that she had to tell, where Brienne was normally too reserved to share. It wasn’t just that he liked to talk, because that man likes to talk a lot, but that he would listen, listen to her, listen to her opinion, would even take advice from her when it came to the factory.

The best times were being walked home by him whenever they left the bar, no matter how late it was, no matter that Brienne had given enough proof already that she could well defend herself. He always insisted, and Brienne relished that, the care of the act, the simplicity of it.

Those were the best times. But they are over.

 _Those times are over_ , Brienne thinks to herself. _Those good times are gone… that is the point, the turning point._

“I am _not_ making fun of you, believe me,” Jaime assures her.

“Then what is it with you? Jaime, we both know that times right now are… nowhere near good, nowhere near… passable. I always told you that you can be honest with me, I asked you and still ask you to be earnest with me. You don’t have to pretend to be well when you are not,” she tells him.

“I am _not_ lying,” Jaime insists, feeling like the boy who cried wolf too often.

“Then just how much booze did you have?”

“Just half a bottle,” Jaime says truthfully, but then bites the inside of his cheek. “You know that’s almost nothing. Us Lannisters have livers made of gold.”

“Jaime.”

“I am not… so drunk that I am seeing pink elephants or am giddy for that reason alone,” Jaime tells her, trying to sound as sincere as he can, because for the first time in a felt eternity, he actually has to keep himself from smiling, when all the while before, he had to force himself to do just that.

“Just tell me what the issue here is, Jaime,” she pleads him this time. “I… it’s late and I… maybe I shouldn’t have come by. I know you said that you didn’t want visitors and…”

“No, no, no! I am glad you came! I am so glad you came. You cannot even begin to comprehend how…,” Jaime insists frantically, but he stops himself once he looks back up to Brienne blinking at him in utter irritation and confusion. “It’s just… I have many things to say. I don’t even know where to begin.”

Because he just knows how it didn’t end, and that is on that road, with her lying before him, and with him unable to save her.

“Just start somewhere,” Brienne says, blinking.

That was always her way of going about it, be it the machines or the so-called “real life,” into which the machines were always embedded, to Brienne at least. That is what she does in her notes the same way. Brienne picks one starting point and traces back from that. You arrive somewhere, and even if it is not to where you want to go, then at the least, you tried that path, can cross it out on the map and start over.

It may take time, it may take longer than it would take most others, but Brienne knows that she has the stubbornness that it takes to follow through with that, no just with the machines but with life in its entirety, for better or worse.

“I… I have too many things to say, but… but Brienne, you must know, I never blamed you for the accident,” Jaime says, picking the beginning that first comes to his mind. The shock on Brienne’s face is more than evident as he speaks, but Jaime will rather have her irritated at him than go on just one more night believing this.

“It was my choice to get your leg out from under the valve, even at the risk of getting my hand caught up in between. That wasn’t your fault. None of it was, you hear me? And I am sorry for not having realized that you… thought that this was so,” Jaime says. “I never wanted you to feel like you are at fault for it. It was my choice – and I don’t regret it. That one thing… I won’t ever regret it.”

Brienne’s eyes widen at that, looking as though she was a child who just got caught with her hands in the cookie jar.

“How do you…?” Brienne stammers.

She never said anything about it once Jaime was out of hospital… or lucid again. Because by the time he had awoken from the medicine-induced sleep, Brienne was too hesitant, too frightened to come by and see him while he was awake. Somehow, she found talking to his sleeping form more comforting, however selfish that may have been. But she found no way to walk inside when it was daytime and he looked out the window or stared at the stump wrapped in thick bandages, ignored his brother sitting by his bedside, watching life pass by on the other side of the door with dim eyes. Brienne, for the first time in her life, didn’t find the courage for it, when normally, she considers herself a rather brave person.

But on that occasion, she wasn’t brave. She was craven. Even at the risk of having Jaime believe that she never showed up at the hospital. Because after the one kiss on the brow Brienne had stolen from him, had taken for herself to somehow pull through the images that kept dancing inside her head whenever she closed her eyes, she lost the courage to come by, fearing that he may remember, may recall, and only feel more pain for that matter. Because no matter what he may say now, Jaime lost that hand because she didn’t find a solution to the machine going wrong.

_To this day I didn’t._

Brienne didn’t want to burden him with her problems. She wanted to solve it on her own, going over the facts again and again, trying to find the primal ground of the problem, the reason why all went so horribly wrong, even if that meant starting over a thousand times, turning up empty-handed. Brienne wanted to keep trying until, at last, she could present him with a solution, with an answer to a question that has been hanging in the air between them ever since that night.

After Jaime lost his hand protecting her, Brienne thought the least she could do was to give him the answer as to how it ever came to it that he had to make that impossible choice. Because, contrary to what he may have been saying to her all along, Brienne always had the feeling that he was chasing the answer to that question, too.

“Look, I will admit, it’s rich coming from the guy who’s done that for so long, drowning himself in self-blame and regret…,” Jaime goes on, but she interrupts him in confusion, “You _blamed_ yourself for _what_ exactly?”

That makes no sense to Brienne at all. In fact, none of this makes sense to her, no matter what point of departure she picks to get to the core of the issue. Jaime is acting like a madman, standing here barefooted in deep winter, suddenly wanting to talk about the things they never managed to address ever since the accident.

And then, to top it all, he means to tell her that he has been blaming himself for what? Saving her life? What would Jaime blame himself for when it comes to the machines? Brienne well understands that Jaime felt remorse over how it had him changed, but the malfunction? He had nothing to do with that.

_All he did was save me…_

“For ordering the machine in the first place, for not having you finish sooner, for not going for the main power switch to maybe shut down the machine… for many things that make no difference anymore now, I realized. Because the past is past, has passed, and that is the end of that chapter, whether we want it to be or not,” he says, shaking his head. “It’s just… I know what it’s like, I know what it’s like to be standing still, and I don’t want you to keep in one spot because of me or because of the machines anymore either.”

“Jaime, I… what is wrong with you?” she asks, tilting her head at him.

“What is finally right with me you should ask instead,” he argues, laughing drily. Jaime probably comes across as a loon to Brienne right now, he is aware, but Jaime doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all.

Brienne is alive. This is the future now, and it’s not the one the ghost with the crow in the scythe showed him.

And that is all that matters.

That is the one thing he cares about becoming part of the past after tonight.

“I wanted to ask you out on a date,” Jaime blurts out, then, as though the seal was finally removed from his mouth so he can finally find the words.

Because why lose the time they already left buried in sorrows for those past three years? Why not dare to make a run ahead?

“ _What_?” Brienne gapes, her mouth standing wide open.

“That night. The night of the accident, I wanted to ask you out on a date. For real, not just beers at the pub to watch the game together. Dinner. _Actual_ dinner. To the restaurant downtown that you have to order a table for well in advance. I wanted to ask you out in the very old-fashioned way. That was my plan. I wanted to… I wanted many things I didn't do in the end.”

“Understandably. You lost your hand,” Brienne argues.

After that, nothing else mattered anymore. And she understood that, though Brienne must say, she yet has to come to terms with the news that Jaime meant to ask her out.

Or is that part of his frenzy right now?

_Maybe he has a lingering fever…_

“And my wits along with it! You were there for me all this time. You… all this time, it was you,” Jaime says frantically.

_You, always you._

Because before the time Present whispered to him that he could save her, it was Brienne who saved him each day new, by being there, by not going away.

“Jaime, you are not making any sense,” Brienne argues, shaking her head. “At all.”

“Screw sense!”

Throw it out the window, toss it down the street, let it be carried away by the winds!

What’s the sense in sense if you forget everything else that matters in turn?

What is the sense in sense if it keeps you from living?

“You clearly must be out of your mind,” Brienne scoffs. “Or it’s the booze talking after all.”

“It’s not!”

It’s life talking, screaming, shouting.

“Jaime, I…,” Brienne stammers.

He kisses her then, not knowing what other to tell her, what other to say, to convey, because words don’t seem to be his forte right at this moment. Jaime doesn’t have answers to her questions, neither does he have them to his own, but that one thing he knows how to do, that one thing he knows he has to do, and as it appears, it’s actually the words that ring soundless that Brienne needed to hear as she soon leans into the touch of his lips against hers.

And it feels as though two things finally fell back in place after they were apart for years, like the machines Brienne keeps going finally got the one gearwheel back that got lost in the course of the accident that cost them almost too much to bear without as she returns the kiss, pulls him closer against the odds of her shock, against the odds of likely not having a plan or solution to that very mystery, barefooted on the street, holding on to her for dear life itself.

It’s strange to think that they could ever grow so distant over that matter, as close as they grew over the years of working together, jesting and teasing and fighting. However, then the accident happened, and it seemed like there was a rift they couldn’t cross. But Jaime doesn’t care anymore.

He will jump right across it, like he jumped on top of the machine to get Brienne out of danger, like he jumped the staircase only just to get to her.

He wanted to go get her – and so he did.

And so he wants do it again.

That is the one direction that makes sense. That is the one path leading beyond the hill for Jaime, and that means it’s the only route for him, no matter to what valley that will eventually take him.

Anything is better than the future that the cloaked ghost showed him. And this right now, even if it is just for tonight, couldn’t be any righter, because he feels no cold, though he stands barefooted in the snow.

After three years, he feels like living again.

Their lips part slowly, both struggling for breath, which wafts around their mouths in white clouds.

“Did you ever have that moment that you have to come close to losing something to know that this is what you can’t bear without?” he asks breathlessly.

“Yes. Three years back, by the vat,” Brienne replies, a lone tear rolling down her scarred cheek. Jaime runs his left over her face to wipe it away.

It’s odd to think that it took him three years not moving a single step, and only just one night to run all that way up to here, up to her. It’s like a rupture in time, a break-out from the continuum, the continuity of their own sadness and remorse.

Jaime kisses Brienne again, not caring for his freezing feet, not caring for anything but her, for them, for touching her without his hand going through Brienne’s body as though it was formed of smoke. For the first time in a long, far too long time, he doesn’t think about the time lost, but about the time gained from it all of a sudden, unexpected, thanks to three ghosts haunting him for good, and one for bad.

“Well, I had a similar realization. I’d die for you, any other day, Brienne, because losing you is… not an option for me. And now I know, I likely messed it all up. I understand that…,” Jaime laughs hysterically once he pulls away again.  

If she were to hit him now, Jaime would honestly understand, because this is still honorable Brienne of Tarth, a woman who, for all her originality, is traditional in more ways that most people ever anticipate when they see that mannish woman approach. Brienne relishes the order of things, she needs those structures, Jaime knows this, and that is why this is probably just the wrong approach to fixing what he couldn’t mend in three years, but he doesn’t care.

He would gladly spend years trying to win her back, to win her like he tried to do it when it was all just a game, when he tried to lure her with beers and watching games, and fancy dinners in clothes that were meant to make her feel like herself, to catch her again, but now it’s out and Jaime feels like he can finally breathe again.

The cold is gone – and Jaime won’t welcome it back. Not into his house, not into his mind, and least of all his heart. He doesn’t want to be like Aerys once he goes, and that means he has to be anything but that man. He has to stay far away from the cold blood.

“I don’t care about that,” Brienne answers, much to his surprise – _and good surprise_ , he may add, because Jaime actually prepared himself for getting slapped in the face for the effrontery.

“I messed up a lot myself, never finding the courage to say that I…,” she goes on, biting her lower lip. “I…”

Brienne doesn't have the words, so she just squeezes his hand, gathering all the courage she had to put away over the years that made her silent.

“I… If you had asked me out on that date, I would have said yes,” she brings out, swallowing, unable to meet his gaze. “But when you woke up after… after the accident… you were obviously in pain, you needed your time. I wanted to give you that. I wanted to give you your space. You went through so much thanks to that bloody malfunction. Seven Hells, you lost your hand for it, trying to protect me, Jaime. Do I need to say more? You deserved to be angry and sad. You went through so much after that accident, and I didn’t want to interrupt that, interrupt you as you scrambled back to your feet.”

She wanted to give him time to find his own solutions. She wanted to give him time to heal, but looking at the man before her now, Brienne can’t help but hope that this is in fact the man whose scars start fading at last.

“You went through much as well,” Jaime argues, lifting his right to her cheek, but stops himself, then, because there are no fingers anymore. Yet, he dares to brush his stump against the side of her face. Brienne shivers against his touch, her big blue eyes right on his, holding on with the kind of strength that captivated him ever since she came into his office, stomping in as boldly as she could.

“Nothing compared to your…,” Brienne means to say, but Jaime interrupts her. “If I am entitled to my anger and sadness, then so are you. What happened was a terrible accident, but I don’t regret that I came for you, Brienne. You understand that? I don’t regret having lost that hand for you. I regret… _other_ things about it, but I try no longer to regret, as much.”

She shrugs her broad shoulders, whispering, “Might be for the best.”

In fact, Brienne must admit that she would like to give it a try, but she didn’t know how, though by the looks of it, Jaime may have found a way to that end without going back to where they started, but simply dashing ahead.

_And maybe, that is actually the solution…_

“We can’t change the past anymore anyways. But I would like to change the future from now on. And I want to start not a week from now or a month, but tonight, right at this moment,” Jaime tells her.

Now is the time. He could save her – and now it’s time he saves himself, too.

“What makes you… think that way all of a sudden?” Brienne she asks, frowning.

Jaime didn’t act like that ever since the accident. Yet, looking at him right now, Brienne sees the man again who smiled at her the brightest smile when they watched the games together in the pub, lamented about the bad music booming over the antique jukebox. She sees the man who walked over the small wall short before her house, hands stuffed in his pocket, making theatrically long strides, reminding her more of a teenager than a grown man, only to make the most ridiculous jump down every time he walked her home, every night a new one, as if to impress her, even though it only ever made Brienne laugh when Jaime bowed to the audience consisting only just of her over and over again, even when he just landed face down in the snow seconds ago. _That_ is the man Brienne suddenly sees resurface in the man standing before her, and at some point, Brienne finds all of this too good to be true, too palpable to be real, a humming that is still too real on her lips from where they kissed.

It’s as though he awoke after a long round of sleep.

“What makes me think that?” Jaime repeats, trying to come up with a smart answer, but he finds none. Every explanation about the ghosts would consume too much of a moment as important as this, so the answer he gives is just as simple as it can be:

“I dreamed of you.”

Because that is the plain truth. Whether he dreamed it, whether it was real, it doesn’t matter, because this here, them together outside his mansion, that is the one time that matters.

He is surprised that Brienne is the one to kiss him this time, but Jaime welcomes the sensation with open arms, because their lips colliding feels like a bit of making up for the time lost, making good on all that was lost, finally stepping forward where they got too used to walking circles that never intercepted.

And that is what it is to Brienne, that is what makes her act bold now, when normally, she can only ever act so shamelessly while doing her job, or telling other people to leave her alone who don’t know her, who don’t understand her, don’t know her the way Jaime grew to know her over time, thus being the only one in the entire city who caught a glimpse of the woman who otherwise hides behind the steam of her machines, her notebooks, and the great shadow she casts. Brienne didn’t find the courage to act boldly for three years, grew hesitant where normally she isn’t. And if Jaime can be bold, if he says that he wants to use the moment – and Brienne wants nothing more than that, then why not dare a bit? Why not take that other step?

It feels like the kiss is making up for the kisses they could have had if destiny hadn’t gotten in the way, for all the times she felt lonely even when she knew him close by – because he seemed so far away, out of her reach, but he is within her reach just now, and Brienne finds that she doesn’t want to let go again. 

Jaime pulls Brienne to him to embrace her, relishing the moment of finally being able to do that, to be certain that she is alive, that her heart is beating against his, all the while reminding himself that this is happening, that this is real, that he is not just dreaming this, that this is his reality now, however miraculous it may seem.

_A Christmas miracle after all, I shall be damned._

Once he pulls away, he leaves his left hand in the nape of her neck, focusing his gaze on hers.

“I have another question,” he says.

“Yes?” Brienne asks, blinking, still trying to wrap her head around all this, or rather, for once, do what Jaime suggested and forget all reason, forget all logic, and simply let the machine run for them.

“Would you accompany me to a date tomorrow? A special date? No pub or anything of that sort?” Jaime asks. He knows he is likely just pushing his luck, but it’s Christmas and he just had the oddest night likely anyone on Planetos ever came to witness.

_So… why not? It’s Christmas after all!_

“Yes,” is the answer he receives, much to Jaime’s own surprise.

_Seems like the Gods are finally on my side for once. Was about damn time._

Brienne is about as surprised as him, but she finds resolve in herself, because Jaime is right. They spent so much time dancing around each other, walking circles around one another, not daring to speak up, not daring to interrupt each other in their ongoing vicious cycles.

So why not let it end at once? Why wait? Why hesitate?

_What for?_

“Good, good, this is… more than good! This is dream-like… and now I just have one more request,” Jaime goes on.

“Which would be?” Brienne asks, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“How about we get inside? I am _freezing_ ,” Jaime laughs, nodding at his feet.

“Alright,” she agrees. “Would be a pity if your feet turned into popsicles.”

“Yeah, I don’t fancy to walk with a cane until I am old and wrinkly,” Jaime laughs, surprising himself at the thought that there is a future now that reaches far, far ahead, to where he is an old wrinkly man, with a cane.

There is future now – and he is ready to live it, even with the past and present behind him never letting go.

The two walk back into Jaime’s mansion, hand in hand, trying to make good on the time they lost spending so close to each other and yet so far apart.

“We still have to call police.”

“We will, we will,” Jaime sighs.

Even now, dutiful Brienne being no one but herself.

And the Seven may be damned, does that make him love her even more.

“I suppose you forgot something,” Jaime says, winking at her, nodding at the golden box with red bow on top.

“Oh, that was…,” Brienne mutters, suddenly all shy again.

“Take it with. Would be a pity if it god soaked,” Jaime say as he opens the door and gestures at Brienne to walk inside, thinking all the while that this is the first time he actually welcomes her in his mansion, while also making a mental note to ensure that she comes to that mansion as often as possible from now on.

Once inside, Jaime shuts the door, glad for the heat of the wooden floor seeping into his frozen feet.

“Phone?” Brienne asks, her gaze wandering around the house, trying to familiarize herself with as many details as she can, because that house is a part of Jaime she didn’t get to know by now, and Brienne wants to get to the bottom of it all.

“Over there,” Jaime says, nodding to the small dresser. “The license plate was… KL 3951. Can I leave that to you? I want to dry my feet off or else I may slide through the house in a not very ceremonial manner.”

“Oh, of course,” Brienne answers, for a moment wondering whether that could grow to be a new routine, the familiarity of it. That she is just in his home, and that this may grow to be her place to occupy as well.

Because she could get used to that.

Jaime makes his way into the small bathroom to grab a towel to quickly dry his feet, generously ignoring the puddles he left on the floor. Once back outside, he watches as Brienne already hangs up the phone.

“They got the guy. He apparently crashed into a tree down Eel Alley,” Brienne says. “The officer said that he was only mildly injured. It’s all over the news already because he started a brawl with the officers trying to help him.”

“Well, that is an odd sort of fortune, I assume,” Jaime says, puckering his lips.

To him, the only thing that matters is that this man didn’t run over the one woman Jaime cares about.

Nothing else matters, at least not tonight.

“C’mon, let’s go upstairs,” Jaime says, simply grasping luck by the scruff of its neck. He spent far too long hesitating, and Jaime is honestly and absolutely done.

Just done.

Brienne watches Jaime wordlessly as he guides her into a fireplace room which she finds absolutely gorgeous, the old furniture, the rich red velvet on the armchairs, the longcase clock with engraved lions on the sides.

“Just make yourself comfortable,” Jaime says as he bends down by the fireplace to light fire.

_And no more wildfire, not even in my dreams. Just yellow, orange and red but no more green. Aerys can keep that stuff to himself for all eternity._

Soon, the warm light spreads throughout the entire room, making the shadows retreat into the furthest corners, hushing away both the cold and the silence that used to be so deafening, because there is now the pleasant crackling of the flames instead.

Jaime balances back on his feet to stand up, pleased to see that Brienne already pulled the other armchair over to his to sit across from him, her coat neatly folded in her lap. He sits down in his own armchair, letting out a sigh.

“Is there any certain reason why you keep an iron bar next to your armchair?” Brienne asks, tilting her head to the side as she looks at the thing that Jaime totally forgot about in the whole rush towards the future.

“One can never know if ghosts come haunting you.”

“You believe in ghosts? You identified yourself as an atheist the second time we talked, and that even though I never asked about it, I may add,” Brienne scoffs, daring to use the tone she didn’t use for so very long when talking to him, the easy smiles, the easy conversational tone that used to be filled with so much bitterness over the years, but seems to be no longer.

“A man can have a change of heart,” Jaime says with a smirk. “Tonight should prove that.”

“So am I to believe in ghosts as well?”

“That is entirely up to you,” Jaime replies. “But I may warn you, as far as I heard, they come when you least expect them.”

“So you mean to tell me that I will also need an iron bar to defend myself from the ghosts?” Brienne asks with a small smirk.

“You are free to use mine,” Jaime chuckles, winking at her, feeling more and more like the person he used to be before the accident, but at the same time like a completely new person, because this isn’t just a return to who they once were, to what they once were to one another, it’s being who they are, right at this moment, bearing their scars, daring to strive for a future hat lies far, far ahead down the road.

“Most kind of you,” Brienne answers, leaning back in the chair. “So… what do we do now with the rest of the night? Or rather, very early morning?”

“Hm, a wise woman once told me that you simply start somewhere.”

“Did she?”

“Oh yes, you would like her. She is as stubborn as an ox,” Jaime says with a smirk, leaning back in the chair as well. “Stubborn enough not to give up on a guy who gave up on himself.”

Brienne smiles at him silently, all the while allowing her fingers to brush over the red bow of the present sitting on top of the coat folded in her lap. It takes them a while, but after some more silence, they do something they stopped doing ever since the accident ripped all of their routines away – they return to them, and twist them into something else. They talk, simply talk, about all the things they didn’t say to one another while they were barely on speaking terms, hesitated from approaching one another. They discuss about the games and how last season was a total downer for their favorite team, the Kingsguard.

They laugh, laugh together, no longer afraid of sharing the past, even the dark bits that overshadow the easy conversations, the heartfelt laughter.

It’s as though they are trying to say all the words left unspoken over the years within a single night, though both know it will take longer than that. And yet, neither one really cares about it.

And it is only when Brienne hands him the present that she took along while the headed inside that he realizes that it’s already Christmas, that the next day came, that the future has arrived, at last granting him a chance to leave past and present to where they belong.

“Well, I got nothing for you,” he says with a grimace as she hands him the golden box.

“Doesn’t matter,” Brienne assures him. “Just open it.”

 _You made me a present you don’t even know the greatness of_ , she adds only to herself.

“No Jack in the box, though? Those are scary as hell,” Jaime asks, narrowing her eyes at her jokingly.

Brienne shrugs her shoulder, leaning back in the armchair with a sigh. “You will only know once you open it.”

“That sounds ominous,” he snickers.

“What, Mr. Lannister, are you that craven?”

“Oh, Ms. Tarth, you should know me better than that,” Jaime hums, starting to pull on the red ribbon that shines like a ruby yet again, though this time it shines in just the right light. “I am reckless past the point of sense.”

“That, I can affirm most definitely.”

Jaime unwraps the present carefully, for the first time in the long time feeling warmth spread throughout him as he goes through the motions. Likely, had he found the present on his doorsteps the next morning, dread would have filled him as he would have struggled with the bow, thanks to his missing hand. However, now he simply takes the time he needs, because Brienne doesn’t push him, doesn’t grow impatient.

Because she waited three years, then a minute longer here or there apparently makes no difference anymore, and that in itself, is liberating for Jaime as well, now that he starts to see clearer what was before him all this time.

Because it’s not just about dashing ahead, wasting no time, it’s also about taking the time.

“A pen,” he says, tilting his head to the side as he takes the pen out of the box. “A _fancy_ pen.”

“Valyrian steel,” Brienne tells him.

Jaime cranes his neck at that. “Oh?”

He never heard that they made pens out of Valyrian steel. It’s a very precious metal that was once used to forge the best blades, back in the time when people carried swords instead of guns, when knighthood was a virtue, when the War of the Five Kings was raging, and the Long Night came and, if history books of that time can be believed to some extent, a knight with golden hand and a woman in blue armor were part of the few chosen ones who wielded the swords that defeated the Others, those mythical creatures you nowadays read to small children about to make them aware that going out alone in the dark may get you right in the monsters’ icy clutches.

“You kept breaking your pencils, so I thought… this one even you don’t snap in two,” Brienne goes on to explain.

“Thank you. That will greatly lower the stationary costs,” Jaime laughs, running the fingers of his left hand over the smooth surface, stopping at the bumps and ridges towards the end. Jaime rubs his thumb over it.

An engraving.

_Oathkeeper._

He smirks at that softly, thinking back to the early days of their working together, when they were at each other’s throats half the time and Brienne believed him to be an oathbreaker, a man without honor, a good-for-nothing man who was all about arrogance but not about talent or compassion. After all, she had heard the stories about him and Aerys, too. Everyone has, or so it seems. Brienne was the first one to tell him that to his face, however, which earned her a begrudging respect from him.

Because she was the first one brave enough to simply let him know of her mistrust, which paved the way for Jaime to make an attempt to prove her the opposite.

Thus, when he invited her to have a beer at the pub for the very first time, she thought Jaime was just full of shit and meant it as a jest, despite his insistence that he was perfectly honest, because he was.

Brienne wasn’t having it, though, so Jaime went ahead to “solemnly swear:”

“I swear it by the Father, the Mother, the Crone and the Smith, the Maiden and the Warrior, and not to forget the Stranger that I speak nothing but the truth, that my intentions are of the truest kind, and that lightning shall strike me right outside if I were to lie to you in any capacity when it comes to this request.”

Brienne had only ever laughed at him, telling him words that Jaime almost forgot, but that are right back in his heart now that he has the pen made of Valyrian steel in hand: “Well, Mr. Lannister, then I suppose you better prove me wrong and convince me that you are not so much an Oathbreaker as you are an Oathkeeper.”

“Is that even an actual word?” he challenged her back then, by which time they were already heading towards the door. “Oathkeeper?”

“It is now,” she announced.

“Then I suppose I am an Oathkeeper in at least that one regard, right?”

“We will have to see.”

“Oh, now you gave me a challenge – and there is one thing you must know about me, Ms. Tarth, I am never afraid of a challenge.”

“Then it seems we have something in common after all.”

“It appears so, Ms. Tarth. It appears so.”

Things seemed so easy back then, and to Jaime’s surprise, and against all odds, they feel suddenly easy again, not entirely weightless, but a weight he is confident they can shoulder – so long they share.

“Oathkeeper,” he says a loud, a smile tugging at his lips.

“I hope that’s not too corny,” Brienne says, averting her gaze to glance at the fire cracking in the fireplace. She thought about that present for longer than is likely healthy, pondering what a fitting gift would be over and over and over again this past year, only to lose confidence time and time again. Even when she walked up to Jaime’s mansion to leave it there, Brienne felt more than tempted to turn back around and just go, but then… she simply started something.

And as it appears, that was the right choice.

“Not at all,” Jaime insists. “It’s perfect. Absolutely… perfect. Everything tonight is.”

“ _Perfect_?” she chuckles softly. “That’s not the description I would give to our lives right now.”

“Maybe not,” Jaime agrees. “But it may be in the future. As I learned tonight, it’s the present and future that make the difference. The past is what frames us, but it’s the present we can frame towards a better future.”

“And how did you reach such epiphany late at night, alone at your mansion?” Brienne questions.

“Oh, you know, even the likes of me sometimes have a little Christmas miracle occur to them,” Jaime says, looking over to the slightly ajar door another time, noting that at last, light is shining through it.

“What happened to you tonight for real, though? Will you tell me?” Brienne asks.

“One of these days, I will. I promise you.”

“I can wait,” Brienne sighs, yawning. “That night was eventful enough, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Absolutely,” Jaime answers, looking back at the flame. “Brienne?”

“Yes?”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, too.”


	7. One Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tyrion prepares yet another Christmas dinner - but he is in for some surprises.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for sticking with me till the very end (also... OMG, this story comes to an end, because that is not very common for me. I am so bad at ending stories because I tend to make them want to go on forever...). Thanks for the comments and kudos. 
> 
> I hope you will enjoy this little bit of an epilog.
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Tyrion Lannister sighs as he looks up his Christmas tree, or rather, the set of Christmas trees lined up in the left corner of his living room. It was Shae’s idea, which he found rather sweet of her to suggest when they went out to buy a tree on the closest market they could find. Thanks to it being smaller trees, Tyrion could thus put the star on top of each of them without her aid, or that of a ladder. Once they were fully decorated, one in red, one in gold, the only tribute Tyrion is ever going to pay to his family, and one in whatever colors Shae could dig up in the box because she said that she wanted one mirroring her nature instead of the Lannister Empire, Shae put two of them on small pedestals, so that they make for a better arrangement.

However, Tyrion can pride himself having decorated those trees entirely by himself and having put the stars and angels on top of them, as is supposed to be the task of the man of the house.

 _It’s about creating memories_ , his older brother had once told him as he unwrapped the fir tree to move it in _just_ the right position. _It’s about making every moment count._

That was back during a time when they were just boys fooling around as Jaime lifted his little brother up in the air as far as his arms allowed him so Tyrion could decorate the tree alongside him, and didn’t only have the lower part of the tree for himself. Tyrion can still remember those evening quite vividly, against the odds that he was still rather young during those years, because that was the time when his older brother was the one who tried to make Christmas, _well, Christmas_. Tyrion didn’t understand until much later that his brother was doing that to counter the negative that came from their father and sister, who only ever linked Joanna Lannister’s death to the holiday, and not at all his birth, or the holiday to be celebrated on that special occasion.

Jaime was trying to make up for Cersei and their father. So that he wouldn’t feel bad, would have some carefree Christmases, have the childhood that Tyrion was oftentimes lacking, always being the object of scorn, not just of strangers, but his own kin the same way. 

Over the years, that was what framed Tyrion’s definition of the word “Christmas.” It was decorating the Christmas tree with his brother, having to stand in the back while Jaime kept moving the tree around until it was perfectly straight, and then, once the work was done, turning out the lights, and then sit in front of the tree to watch the candles light up the whole room.

 _That_ was Christmas to Tyrion, his brother was who and what framed that holiday and turned it into something good when everyone else in his close periphery had no happiness to spare for the occasion.

And deep down, Tyrion wished that this spirit had survived over the years, but for what feels like a small eternity already, he decorated his own Christmas trees, lived his own life, and Jaime somehow managed to slip through his tiny fingers.

However, no amount of good reasoning or careful planning seems to redefine Christmas to what it meant to him when he was younger and Jaime was there to give content to a word that was hollowed out ever since the accident.

Tyrion knows he shouldn’t be in a bad spirit, even if his brother doesn’t manage to come out of his shell just yet. He read enough articles on the matter to know that trauma management takes time, that after such an event, after such a loss, even the strongest people, and as such Tyrion considers his older brother to this very day, don’t instantly come back to their feet. Thus, rationally, Tyrion is aware that he should not feel disappointment over another trial run having turned out as a fail, _but then again… It’s Christmas after all!_

And while his brother may be _moody_ on the occasion, Jaime is in good health again, which was not the case shortly after the horrendous accident at the factory, and that Tyrion had to learn is something you cannot take for granted, no matter how much of a strong man your big brother is otherwise. However, a small part of Tyrion had hoped that his brother would be able to go a bit out of his usual ways, bring himself to come by, revive that spark again that they used to feel sitting under the Christmas tree when still children, the spark that somehow grew very, very faint over those three years.

However, there is always another year, another trial run.

_So maybe… next year._

The doorbell rings, pulling Tyrion’s attention away from the Christmas trees, but before he can even act, he can Shae call out from the kitchen, “Will you get the door already? If I bother to make dinner, even though I got no clue about the stuff you make in Westeros, you can at least do _that_ part, my lion!”

“As my lady commands!” Tyrion snorts, amused, before he waddles over to the door. For a moment he wonders whether he accidentally ended up inviting anyone else but Jaime for his feigned _party with friends_ who never existed. Because Tyrion’s true friends are his intern Podrick and that good-for-nothing Bronn, who is there for the smart comments and drinking his liquor cabinet empty. And Tyrion rather has their company for the lesser holidays, like New Year’s Eve. Because Christmas, no matter what, is reserved for the family, that is part of the definition even with his brother momentarily being astray.

Tyrion turns the door knob, which was specifically lowered to fit his size, just like everything in this house fits him and his life, in contrast to the Lannister Residence where no doorknob was ever moved, but where he was rather provided a stool there, a pedestal here, as though he was only ever visitor in his own home. However, that is his home, and his family safe for Jaime has no part in it.

The short-grown man opens the door, glancing at a pair of black dress pants first but as he tears his gaze up, Tyrion can’t quite believe whom he sees before him.

“ _Jaime_?!”

The older brother offers a crooked, uncertain sort of smile that looks rather foreign on a man who is otherwise so very confident. Tyrion studies the man before him, looking almost like another person than the one he visited at the factory last night. Jaime trimmed his beard, put on one of his good woolen coats with golden buttons, his hair is combed back, and while Tyrion is sure to spot some dark around the older man’s eyes, he looks more awake than he has for the past three years.

In fact, Jaime looks much more like the man he was before the accident, as though, at last, the lights were switched back on his eyes, which has Tyrion wonder, if only for a second, whether he may just have discovered the secret of time travel, but really just for a moment.

“What are you… what are you doing here?” Tyrion asks, still trying to wrap his head around this, trying to ensure that it isn’t the _one-two-three-four_ glasses of grog he treated himself to earlier responsible for what he sees before him right now.

“Apologizing for being a shitty brother…. And a shitty person in general?” Jaime says with a grimace, chewing on his lower lip. Lannisters are not very good at apologizing – because their father hammered it into their skulls since early age that they aren’t supposed to be sorry for anything. Because they are Lannisters. They are meant to be proud.

_Needless to mention that this man had some many bad lessons to teach._

“And I still hope that you will finally introduce me to your sweetheart?” Jaime goes on, letting out a light cough.

“ _Sweetheart_?!” Tyrion gapes. “How, how do you…?”

Jaime shakes his head. “It makes no difference. I just… found out recently.”

“How?”

“I have my resources.”

“Well, those resources are damn good. Or was it Bronn? It was Bronn, wasn’t it?”

“No, I didn’t see him since the last New Year’s Eve party that featured you and him singing _The Dornishman’s Wife_ perfectly out of tune,” Jaime says with an uncertain smile, because he didn’t forget those things that people tend to believe are meaningless, he just momentarily couldn’t call them tonight.

_But that is over now._

The younger man frowns only ever the more at what he hears. He still tries to process the situation, tries to reason with it, because right now? That was the least expected result he saw coming.

He watches as his older brother runs the fingers of his left hand over his trimmed beard, seemingly pondering the words. “Tyrion… will you hear me out?”

“Of course. But Jaime, one thing before we even get started. I do understand that you are not in a very _festive_ mood. You don’t have to apologize for that, if that is what you want to get at. I suppose it wasn’t for the best to just wind up at the factory and keep pushing you. It was…,” the younger brother means to say, but Jaime is quick enough to interrupt, “I have to apologize because I need you to understand that…”

Jaime lets out a light cough before going on, “That you are more important to me than my guilt-tripping should have been to me as of late. And I am sorry if I made you feel like you are not a part of my life.”

“Jaime, I…”

“Do you want to hear something really corny now to put us both to shame?” Jaime asks, which only adds to Tyrion’s confusion. And for that he has to give his older brother credit, not many people manage to have him confused.

_I am the smartest person I know, and yet, I don’t know how to solve the riddle my brother proves to be right now._

“Sure?” he answers, shrugging his shoulders.

Jaime nods his head, sucking in a deep breath. “You know, after Mother died, I was… very sad. I was… _really_ very sad.”

As someone told him just recently, you have to start somewhere and work from there.

Tyrion only ever frowns at him. “Naturally?”

How wouldn’t he be?

“You know what made me pull through that sadness back then? What kept me going when I didn’t know how to move on from her death?”

The younger man shakes his head, tapping his fingers over the side of the door. Jaime normally never addresses their mother, just like the rest of the family somehow put the _Cloak of Silence_ over Joanna Lannister.

Tyrion reckoned that perhaps, deep-down, Jaime felt the slightest bit of the sentiment their Father and sister displayed – to see the fault in Tyrion being born, that this is what killed her, that _he_ killed her. While the younger man was always absolutely sure that Jaime wouldn’t ever say such a thing or hold it against him, Tyrion wouldn’t begrudge him for it if Jaime had such a thought occur to him, easy as that.

_It’s part of human nature to try to find the cause, the reason. Humans try to find the source, they dare to explore the unknown, even if that means investigating the very dark unknown of humans’ very own nature._

Tyrion himself tried very hard to find the cause for some many things that he learned are part of human nature. He tried to find the reason behind Cousin Orson, who got hit in the head by a horse when he was still a child, which made him a slow fellow who never spoke true words thereafter, and his constant smashing of beetles with a stone. And in all the time Tyrion spent watching and observing his cousin, he could not figure out the reason why. No matter what books Tyrion consulted, no matter who he asked, Cousin Orson kept smashing beetles and Tyrion didn’t know why. And the only explanation he could give himself was that there are some parts of human nature even the smartest ones don’t come to comprehend, they are closed away someplace where no one can reach it, understand it.

And so, the thought that Jaime may have some sort of misgivings over their mother’s death, which was, admittedly, directly linked to his birth, made sense to him under that premise.

“No, I don’t know what made you pull through that,” Tyrion says, taking his time to say the words, if only to get a bit more time to find his own answers, but he finds none.

“It was you. You made me pull through,” Jaime says, which takes Tyrion so much by surprise that he momentarily loses any thread of thought he could gather at the moment, leaving him only just staring up to his older brother.

_Two Christmas miracles in a day? Now, that I call an anomaly!_

“Because mom… she gave me you. That made me get over it, move past her death, past my anger and sadness. Your life… made me move forward again back then,” Jaime says, blinking, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “And now that we are what we are, with Father and our dear sister safely stored _far_ away from us… I should have seen far sooner just how much that matters, and how much it matters that I _say_ it, should have said it in a long time. You are the one family I still care about. Even if I bitch and curse at you, and will likely continue to, because I am just the type, and because you can be damn annoying… I hope you know that I love you and that it was not because of you that I didn’t want to come to your party, but just because… I was getting lost in the past for a while, a _way_ too long while… but now… well, I am back in the present.”

“Yeah, corny much, brother,” Tyrion laughs, though he has tears in his eyes as he speaks. Because human nature sometimes is about forgetting reason, he learned some time ago. Sometimes you have to stop being smart and, _as corny as that may now sound_ , let your metaphorical heart speak.

Jaime lets out a shuddered laughter. “I warned you.”

“You did indeed,” Tyrion lets out a nervous chuckle.

“So… are we good again?” the older man asks rather uncertainly.

“ _Good again_? Brother, you don't get rid of me that easily,” Tyrion tells him with a smile. “Ever.”

“For which I am glad,” Jaime says. “And thankful.”

“Will you get down a bit so that I can properly hug you now or what?” Tyrion teases with a grin. “That is the one occasion where we can do that, leaving our fragile male ego intact.”

Jaime kneels down on the doormat, holding on to his little brother as tightly as he can, thinking back to when he first held him in a bundle, thankful that this is still possible, that he is still here, and won’t leave either.

Last night taught him that you have to hold on to just those things, just those people, as tightly as you can, no matter how much you may feel like pulling away.

“And hey, you made it before Shae burned the turkey! There might still be a chance for this Christmas to be something!” Tyrion laughs as they pull apart again.

“I heard that!” Shae calls out from the kitchen once more, but this time, she comes around the corner, wooden spoon in hand. The petite woman looks at Jaime from head to toe, once, twice, then another time.

“You didn’t lie when you said he is the _picture boy_ of the family,” she comments, looking back at Tyrion, tilting her head to the side slightly.

“He is the muscles, I am the brains,” the younger brother laughs.

“And what is your sister, then?” she questions.

“The liver,” Tyrion answers with a smirk.

“Ah.”

Jaime takes the opportunity to step a little closer. Shae covers the last bit of distance between them, wiping her free hand against the apron a few times.

“Hi, the name’s Jaime. It’s a pleasure to finally be able to meet you,” he says, holding out his left hand to her. “And yeah, can’t give the right for obvious reasons.”

“Pleasure. I'm Shae,” she answers, taking a firm grip of his left hand. “You’re lucky that you turned up in time, or else I would have hated you for all my life. And I hold grudges… a lot.”

“She is as resentful as a Lannister,” Tyrion laughs, looking at her fondly.

“It’s always a relief to know that we are not the only ones!” Jaime grins.

“Will you stay for dinner?” Shae asks. “And you better say ‘yes’ because I made tons of food he will have to eat no matter how awful it.”

She thumbs at Tyrion.

“And he has to say that it all tastes wonderfully delicious,” the dark-haired woman goes on. “Even if it’s nasty. Or rather, especially if it’s nasty.”

“If you have me, I would gladly…,” Jaime means to say, but Tyrion interrupts him, “Of course we do. So, come in.”

“There is one more thing, though,” Jaime argues, holding up his hand.

“What now? More teary talk? Brother, my little heart cannot take that much, at least not until properly intoxicated,” Tyrion replies with a grimace.

“You already had half the grog, the punch, and the eggnog,” Shae notes.

“Over a longer period of time, then you don’t get as drunk, love,” Tyrion argues, but then turns his attention back to Jaime as he explains, “No, it’s… I have another guest to bring along, if that’s alright.”

“The more, the better. Less nasty food to stuff into the fridge,” Shae says, wavering around with the wooden spoon.

“Tyrion?” Jaime asks, looking at the younger man, who only shrugs his shoulders. “I am _aching_ to see whom you bring along to a party you did not even plan to attend!”

_After all, humans are creatures of curiosity!_

Jaime turns around and walks a few steps down the path leading to Tyrion’s house, gesturing at someone who is apparently still into hiding behind the brushes. Tyrion watches with growing amusement as his brother evidently starts to fight with the person in hiding, gesticulating wildly. It’s a bit like watching a show for Tyrion, a broadcast that he never thought would come back up on TV, and yet, it now plays in reality as he sees the brother he thought he had lost in the wake of the accident, trampling around on the snow, throwing his right arm up in exasperation, rolling his eyes, seemingly aping the person hiding behind the brushes.

_Apparently, repetitions are a way forward – so long they happen with a difference._

And Tyrion can easily spot that difference, because this is not just his brother from the past, but seemingly a renewed man.

 At last, Jaime seems fed up with the argument, so the older brother reaches out and grabs the person to pull away from the brushes, and that is when Tyrion sees the person getting dragged along by the wrist.

“This is my plus one,” Jaime announces as they climb the small staircase leading to the door.

“Brienne?” Tyrion gapes.

“You know her?” Jaime frowns.

“I met her at the hospital a few times, and at the factory, naturally,” Tyrion replies, giving a curt nod to her.

Tyrion always thought that there was something going on between those two, because he prides himself being a good observer, and those two had a way of looking at each other that spoke a clear message, even though those two seemingly didn’t know the translation, or at the least they didn’t by the time.

Because looking at the fact that Jaime is still holding on to her wrist and brings her to the first Christmas Dinner ever since the accident, they seemingly found the Rosetta Stone to decipher what Tyrion had a hunch on for quite some time.

“Hello… Tyrion,” Brienne answers, blushing furiously at the sudden attention. “Uhm, Shae, right?”

“Pleasure,” the other woman says, shaking her hand with a firm grip. “It’s always good to have not just men around. They are dumb.”

“So, is it alright if I…,” Brienne mutters, suddenly far too shy for a woman standing as tall as she does, but Jaime knows it no other way, and wouldn’t want it any other way either. Brienne has always been this most delicious balance between stubborn strength and fragile shyness. 

“Just get inside already!” Shae grumbles. “Or else we all freeze to death. Winters around here are way too cold for me anyway.”

“She rather spends holidays in the Free Cities,” Tyrion chuckles, finding that such a new Christmas could very well be a refined definition of the term, one that aims more towards the present, if not the future.

“Which is where we will be going soon enough,” she tells him. “I didn’t sign up for this weather.”

“C’mon in, then,” Tyrion says, gesturing at Jaime and Brienne to come inside.

“Time to celebrate Christmas!” he goes on. “And what would Christmas be without grog, eggnog, and sweet plum punch?”

“A sober one,” Jaime chuckles softly as he closes the door.

“Exactly,” Tyrion laughs. “Just let me get you two a glass.”

 _A Triple Christmas Miracle. Who could have thought_? Tyrion thinks himself as he walks into the kitchen. Being a man of the sciences, someone to trust logic above anything else, he must admit that this is a rather unexpected turn of events.

Though Tyrion must say, he couldn’t be happier being proven wrong.

“Wait, let me help you,” Jaime says as he sees Brienne shrug out of her coat, reckoning that after all the time of hardships, it can’t harm to sprinkle in some good old courtship. Brienne only shakes her head at him with a roll of her big blue eyes as he takes the coat off her shoulders.

They spent the whole night talking by the fireplace. Both were perfectly surprised once they realized that morning had already risen and the sun started peeking through the window. Jaime didn’t even realize how fast time flew. The night, however adventurous, however miraculous, seemed far too short to make sense of all that happened that very night. However, Jaime found that apparently, next day came and with that, a new chance to go on with the same spirit that had him feel no cold while standing barefooted in the snow.

And so, when he brought up his brother’s Christmas party, Jaime took another chance, stretched his luck as far as he could, and simply asked Brienne whether she would accept an invitation to a first date already at that point of time. He shouldn’t have been surprised that at first the usual excuses came from her were those he had once anticipated when he wanted to ask her out on a date for the first time.

“But I have nothing to wear.”

“I received no invitation.”

“Am I just supposed to wind up there like this and celebrate Christmas with them? Are you out of your mind?”

And maybe he was, and who knows? Maybe Jaime still is, but he managed to answer her questions and counter her arguments with one simple thing – hidden in the back of his wardrobe. While surely, it had gotten a bit dusty over the years, it was the solution to this little problem Jaime faced, in a box with silver ribbon and blue wrapping, the suit he had bought her for when he wanted to take her out for dinner for the first time, but missed the opportunity thanks to misfortune intervening.

Which, in turn, meant that Brienne had to say “yes” whether she wanted to or not, or so Jaime told her.

Because he is done waiting, done wasting time, wasting valuable future, and far more importantly, perhaps, a future he wants to share.

Tyrion returns into the living room, trying to balance the glasses in his tiny palms. Jaime readily takes them from him to make sure he doesn’t spill anything on what Jaime assumes is a new carpet, judging by the looks of it.

“I would like to make a toast,” the younger man announces. “Shae, darling?”

“Back and forth, back and forth and back again! Your kinds of Christmas are nothing but work,” Shae pouts as she comes back out of the kitchen, accepting the glass he hands to her.

Tyrion coughs lightly before holding up his glass. “I would say: Let us drink to family lost and found. Love lost and found. To Christmas miracles defying all logic… and… did I forget anything?”

“You should drink to your Gods that the food will turn out edible,” Shae suggests.

“I don’t think prayers will suffice, my dear,” Tyrion snickers, to which she only ever shrugs her shoulders in absolute nonchalance. “I warned you.”

“Where was I?” Tyrion asks, shaking his head.

“The toast?” Brienne scaffolds.

“Oh, right, that. Hm. Jaime? Do you have anything to add?” the younger brother asks.

Jaime glances at Brienne once, giving her a tender smile, before he speaks up, holding his glass a little higher, “I would say… Let us drink to the past, shall it always be remembered, but not control our lives. To the present, shall it be the time we use to both remember the past and build the future. And to the future, shall it be the guiding beacon in the distance, always bringing us back home to our loved ones and show us the way ahead, even if it comes with some many tripping stones to overcome.”

“Hear ye, hear ye!” the others call out, clinking the glasses together to take a drink.

And while this Christmas is anything but perfect, Jaime is aware, this is likely the best Christmas he has had – until now. Because if there is one thing he learned last night, then it is that the future can hold some many surprises.

* * *

 

Outside, on the other side of the wooden fence leading to the property, without anyone’s knowledge, out of anyone’s sight, three ghosts stand on freshly fallen snow, looking through the window on the other side of which a Christmas celebration is in place.

“At last the old man got a move,” Past grumbles, arms crossed over her chest. “Took him long enough.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say he took _that_ long. Others fared far worse than he,” argues Present, her face a slate of pure light again. “But then again, he has the fortune on his side that all that he wanted, all that he needed, was so close within his reach all this time.”

“Which makes it ever the more ridiculous that it took him so long,” the girl grumbles, leaning her head on the fence, kicking at some of the snow, though no single ice particle moves.

“Shush now,” Present scolds her. “Look at the good work we have done, look at what is now the present just about to become future! This was a combined effort – and to a good result.”

“I am just looking forward to tell Aerys about it and see him go up in flames in anger that not everything revolves around him,” Past huffs. “He will be _inconsolable_ that he doesn’t get a chain buddy to torment.”

Present tilts her head to the side with a smile cutting across the light.

“For that you are not their mother, you have just that dumb motherly expression on your face, you know, Present?” Past notes.

“I am just happy for them,” she argues.

“You are too soft-shelled, Present,” Past argues, shaking her head, her face shapeshifting once, then twice, before returning back to her normal expression. “Also, I may add that you cheated. You told him something about the future. And that’s still his part.”

She nods over at the cloaked Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, who just watches on silently, the crow that once was his scythe sitting on his shoulder, a crow that sees everything for him, having three eyes to spare to look into the time that only they know.

“And you know, you are the one who always keeps telling me that I have to abide by the rules,” Past goes on to lament, puckering her lips.

“That he could save her? That was hardly a hint,” Present argues. “More of a push in the right direction. And that is what I do, lead the present path, hm?”

“Hint enough to make him take action,” Past points out to her. “In the future. Aren’t I right, brother?”

She looks over at the dark-cloaked ghost again, though naturally, there is no reply coming from him.

“Was I supposed to let him fail?” Present scoffs. “Where is the sense in that, you tell me, Past?”

“We are not there to say whether they fail or not. We just show them what they must know. The rest is up to them,” Past tells her. “In case you forgot.”

“Oh well, maybe I was just being in a festive mood and momentarily forgot,” Present says, her face losing more and more light until contours become clear as she watches the people inside talking and drinking, living the lives on the edge towards a future, sharing a past she can only ever look upon from the distance.

“Or maybe you just like to think of yourself as this Joanna,” the girl-ghost argues. “Your face takes semblance of her, and you should take that from someone who wears other people’s faces all the while.”

She points at Present with Needle, whose face gains more and more of the shape of the face she displayed while guiding a seemingly very lost man through the present that he forgot was his to use.

“I quite fancy the look of her, what can I say?” Present laughs easily. “And anyway. So what? Look at them. _This_ makes me happy. This means we did our job outright. It means that our effort came to fruition. And that is all that should matter, should it not?”

“You just want sappy happy endings all the while,” the girl groans. “Where is the drama in that, you tell me? There was a time when the world was nothing but drama. And now everything is just so boring. Even other people’s faces are.”

“Ever the more a reason to perhaps start wearing only yours for a time again,” Present suggests. “Just in case you forgot that part of your own past, which would be a pity, since that is your one true time to occupy.”

The girl-ghost rolls her eyes at the older woman, but then lets out a sigh, leaning against the fence, contemplating.

“And in any case… This was rather dramatic, though, don’t you think?” the other woman goes on. “It was a close call.”

“True again,” Past sighs, sticking her tongue into the inside of her cheek. “And I like the blonde girl a lot. She has the right spirit. She’s a fighter, I can tell. I like how she fights back all the time, and knocks all the little shits into the dust. We need more of that sort. I saw her training. She even knows how to battle with swords. I’ve seen it in her past. Like a warrior lady I once knew, once admired… long, long time ago.”

She looks on with a faint smile tugging at her lips, remembering her own past for a while, and that without the heaviness of it wearing down on her to make her change into the skin of another, slip into the past of someone else.

“True, and maybe we will get some more of those. What do you say, Future?” Present asks, turning to the cloaked figure beside her with a warm smile. “What will become of them?”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come remains silent, as always, the only sound being that of his three-eyed crow cawing while sitting on his shoulder. Future holds up his dark-feathered hand to the bird, which readily pecks at the kernel he produces out of thin air to feed to the winged animal.  

Past rolls her eyes, burying her head between her shoulders, whereas Present laughs softly.

Some things truly never change, no matter the time.

“It’s always the same with you,” Present sighs. “You, who knows it all, have nothing to say.”

The hooded ghost turns his head in her direction slightly, but then looks back ahead again, because that is apparently the one direction that matters, even though he is the one who sees it all, past, present, and future.

“But then again… perhaps that is the point, hm? Some wise man once said that there lies great wisdom in knowing when to say what, and far more importantly, when to remain silent.”

“How would you know?” Past huffs. “That would be my time.”

“I read it somewhere, in another person’s present. They have such wonderful ways to make the past a living thing in the present, blurring the edges,” Present replies with a smile. “If only to bring us closer together.”

Past rewards her with a small smile this time, before she asks, “So? Shall we head back?”

“Oh, can’t we stay a while longer?” Present pleads. “We get such a happy ending so rarely! If only for a while…”

“No, c’mon, I am bored,” the girl argues. “This will be past soon enough anyway.”

“But then I won’t know it.”

“I can tell you. As you said… maybe it’s time we blur the edges a bit,” Past says, shrugging her shoulders.

“I would quite like that,” Present agrees, before turning to Future, “Would you think it’s alright to blur the edges a bit further?”

The hooded ghost turns his head to her slowly once more, then takes his black bird on his hand and lets it climb into the sky.

“I will take that as a yes,” Present sighs. “Oh well, no matter what, I bet they will have a very Merry Christmas, even if we don’t keep watch. Sometimes… you have to push the young bird out of the nest to teach it how to fly.”

She glances up at the crow shrieking in the sky, as though to show the way.

A wild wind blow down the street, twists, tumbles, and turns as it brushes over the street and the sidewalk, blows snowflakes high up in the air, and as the ice particles fly their way, climb to the one direction that allows them movement, the three ghosts turn into snowflakes as well, and are carried away by the cold winds blowing, to times and places only they will know.

* * *

 

Back inside, Tyrion and Shae busy themselves in the kitchen, fighting in a mocking manner over whose sauce tastes worse as loudly as they can, because this is their home, and that means no Christmas has to be perfect, but only as good as they can make it.

Christmas miracles, as it appears, are not perfect, but that doesn’t make them any less welcome.

Brienne and Jaime, on the other hand, took refuge in the living room, glancing at the Christmas decoration, the bright lights, enjoying the simplicity of this most wondrous experience that came out of nowhere, but is more than welcome to become their new place to be and thrive within.

“So? Is that first date quite alright for you?” Jaime asks with a smirk. “I mean, it was a bit of a rush, so I couldn’t prepare it as well as I would normally have done.”

“Yes, I can’t complain,” Brienne replies with a shy smile. “I mean, the order of things seems quite unconventional, but… what in life is conventional anyway?”

Last night surely wasn’t, and Brienne learned that this is the kind of anomaly she is glad for, because it meant a move forward, a fresh start.

“Everything that’s boring, that’s for sure. But do not fret, my lady, I will court you properly from now on,” he says, winking at her. “I assure you.”

“Court me?” Brienne repeats, letting out a dry laugh.

“I am a man of old standards, didn’t you know?” he chuckles softly.

“Right,” she huffs, rolling her big blue eyes.

“You will see in due time, I promise you. And I now come to have a pen that attests to my honorable intentions, don’t you remember?” Jaime snickers, before pulling her in for a kiss.

Brienne is surprised at first, but eases against Jaime’s touch almost immediately, having found that while they spent so much time apart while up close, she tries her best to just let that go and focus on the goodness that returned to their lives, right on the doorsteps of his mansion.

It will take some time to grow truly familiar again. However, as of now, Brienne finds herself being perfectly fine with the rush ahead, the leap into the future. They stood still for so long – to open a new, fresh chapter seems heavenly compared to the misery they lived through these past few months and years, always turning to the same page, like that in her notebook, into which, just yesterday night, she tried to write Jaime’s name with her left, trying to get a feeling of what it must be like for him to use his left.

But as Jaime told her just again this morning as they helped themselves to a very strong coffee after the sleepless night, they have to let these things go, not forget, but let go, and so, Brienne has made a promise to herself: The notebook will get a spot in a box, so not to be forgotten, but she will no longer carry it around with her wherever she goes she will no longer allow for its weight to hold her down.

Brienne, she must admit, is quite ready to close the chapter, let the ink dry, and move on to a new adventure.

“What was that one for?” she asks with a bit of tease in her voice once he pulls away.

“A mistletoe! It’s a tradition, didn’t you know?” Jaime tells her with a broad grin that she was hoping to find for three years and is ever the more glad to have back because she thought she had lost it the last time he jumped down the small wall leading to her home after a ridiculous stunt that had him kiss the snow.

“Jaime, there is no mistletoe above our heads,” she argues, chuckling, pointing up to a ceiling free of any mistletoes. Jaime just kisses her again, softer this time.

She raises an eyebrow at him, finding herself laughing. “And that one? Also under some invisible mistletoe?”

“No. Just making the most out of every moment from now on. No more wasting time,” Jaime says, before kissing her once more, for as many times as she will permit.

No more lingering in the past.

That chapter is closed, remembered, but closed.

He wants to write on fresh pages, even with his chicken-scratch if need be, but Jaime wants to create new contents instead of bemoaning the loss of pages burned by the edges over the years.

He has many pages to fill, still. He can feel it.

Jaime wants to start a new chapter, and it seems that Brienne is ready for it, too, so they can start their first shared chapter after such a long time of seemingly being separate, when in fact they just longed to be together. And that chapter should likely bear the name “A Christmas Miracle,” a story that yet waits to be written.

For many more to come.

_The End of the Beginning._


End file.
